
Class 
Book. 






GopigkM 

COPYRIGHT SEPOSm 



THE VETERAN 



AND 



HIS PIPE 




CHICAGO AND NEW YORK : 
BELFORD, CLARKE & CO 

1886. 



L^ 



Copyright, 
Wm. Penn Nixon, . 

1885. '^'^■^--v/ 
All i-ights reserved. />' 1^^ 



Donohue & Henneberry, Printers and Binders, Chicago. 



PREFACE. 



Comrade: 

If you have succeeded in forgetting the impulse that 
made yon, for a time at least, a hero, and regarding your 
wounds as "•23oor dumb mouths" that testify of personal 
peril, rather than the immortal cause in which they were 
won, you can hardly feel surprise that the veteran is 
remembered chiefly as a pensioner ; heroism regarded only 
as a claim to public charity, and '^the soldier vote''' con- 
sidered a political commodity, to be purchased with the 
promise of public plunder. 

The Author. 

April 14, 1886. 



INDEX OF TITLES. 



A Double Annlv^ersaey 19 

" Fkeedom and the Right" 21 

High Water Mark , , 32 

" The President Visits Gettysburg " 45 

Our May Days 58 

" Memorial " (?) Day 70 

' ' Alas, Sweet Charity " 82 

Puritan or Cavalier 95 

" Peace in the Clover-Scented Am " 108 

" The Day We Celebrate ! " 122 

The Harmony op Disagreement 137 

" The Hurt Is in the Heart " 150 

Types and Landmarks 162 

" With Drum-Beat and Heart-Beat " 172 

The PtEFLECTED Light of Fame 188 

The Mount of Transfiguration 202 

Hymns of the Ages .• , 212 

Songs of Two Pp:oples 224 

The Climax of Devotion 234 

Joined or Parted? . . . 248 

Autumn Reveries 261 



THE YETERAI AND HIS PIPE. 



A DOUBLE ANOTYEESAEY. 

Apkil 14, 1861 — The Sureender of Fort Sumter — 
April 14, 1865 — The Assassination of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

IT is a strangely eventful day. Blower, — the anniver- 
sary of death and life. Many, perhaps the great 
majority of those who think to note its recurrence, 
count it perchance the saddest of all those land-marks 
by which our national growth is marked, or individual 
achievement commemorated. But we will celebrate it. 
Blower, as a feast of thanksgiving and a festival of 
rejoicing. Twenty-four years ago to-day the nation 
awoke to the new life of its most glorious epoch. The 
blow had fallen on the evening of the previous day. 
At midnight tolling bells began its proclamation to a 
wondering people. With the dawning came fuller 
knowledge of the thing we feared. The echoes of the 
guns of Moultrie were yet sounding the knell of peace 
over our broad land. The sunshine of the sabbath 
morning looked down on strangely contrasted scenes. 
The South was hoarse with exultant shouting. The 
emblems of rejoicing floated there from every hilltop. 

7 



8 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

The cannon's sulphurous breath and the bonfire's 
smoldering embers told of the night's wild jubilee of 
exultation. The church bells pealed out joyfully. The 
matin hymns were songs of victory. Miriam's exult- 
ant chant echoed from thousands of lips that smiled 
with the joy of accomplished success and anticipated 
triumph. Thanksgiving was the theme of every pulpit. 
The light of conquest was in every eye, the joy of vic- 
tory in every heart. 

Where the nation's power was still supreme, and her 
glory esteemed above section and self, the scene was 
widely different. How well we remember it to-day, 
Blower. The chill, gray sunshine looked on clouded 
brows ! Eyes were dull with weeping, or red with sul- 
len rage ! Men wore grave faces and were strangely 
silent ! Women's cheeks were pallid, and they wept 
stealthily ! The sabbath bells sounded full of solemn 
foreboding as they called a stricken people to the house 
of prayer. The sanctuaries overflowed with worship- 
ers ! The nation bowed before its God, and prayed 
that the blood-red cup might pass its lips, or grace be 
given to bear its woe! The Merciful heard and 
answered! The nation drank of the red wine of 
slaughter; but a richer, stronger life than she had 
ever known before swept through her veins ! 

Twenty years ago to-day another scene in the great 
tragedy of our national life was enacted. On that day 
the stroke was given which transformed an exultant 
nation into a weeping, grief-stricken people. The 
grandest life which has yet sprung from the loins of the 
Western world in the very hour of triumph entered. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. \) 

through the gate of treacherous violence, into the haven 
of immortality. The banners of victory flaunted gaily 
over thousands of happy homes when the sun went 
down. Smiling lips told joyful tidings by the firelit 
hearth. Fair cheeks flushed red with welcoming roses 
for the home-coming brave. Even they that mourned 
the dead forgot their sorrow in the universal joy. The 
morrow's noon saw the flaunting banners bound and 
draped, the fair cheeks paler than the snow, and the 
mourners' woe enhanced a thousandfold. 

Ahr! well do I pmember. Blower, how I pressed 
the empty sleeve against the aching heart, while your 
polished amber tip slid from my quivering lips, as I 
bowed my head upon the rough pine desk to which a 
veteran's duty bound me still, and wept when the 
morning brought us knowledge of the night's bereave- 
ment. I remember thrusting your gleaming bowl 
within its silken case and pushing it aside regardless of 
its soothing fragrance. I remember still the trace of 
tear-drops on the azure cuff which marked the humble 
service I was permitted to discharge. How often had 
I looked with pride on that gold-bordered bit of velvet 
which told of danger manfully incurred, and duty 
faithfully performed. Until that hour the veteran's 
pride had swallowed up all other thought. Our coun- 
try's glory had blinded me to all wea^<:er sentiments. 
The roar of battle had seemed to me the Nation's regal 
challenge to a wondering world and waiting future, 
published by the cannon's brazen lips. Laden as it 
might be with terror, it always brought a thrill of rap- 
ture to my heart, because I heard in its echoes the 



10 THE VETERAN AKD HIS PIPE. 

angry defiance of a free people to oppression, or the 
triumph of conscience over wrong. 

Even the poor brave comrades who had shared peril 
and privation with ns, whose bones lay bleaching on so 
many battle-scarred hillsides, had hardly been mourned. 
To have died for such a cause seemed more of a privi- 
lege than a hardship. They were rather to be envied 
than deplored, because of the beneficent glory that 
enshrined their memories. It seemed but natural for a 
soldier to die, and an infinite honor to die for a cause 
so holy. They had not fought for themselves, their 
own exaltation, nor even for their own homes or fire- 
sides. Their devotion was not tainted by the flavor of 
self. They died for the rights of man, for the per- 
petuity of a government founded on liberty, in deadly 
conflict with a republic based on the principle of 
slavery. These were foolish notions, as we now can 
well perceive ; but in those days I never doubted the 
Moslemic dogma that "the gates of heaven swing 
easily before brave souls coming up from the battle- 
field." So the thought of conflict brought only a stern, 
strange joy. When we heard that thousands fell, we 
only thought how each death magnified our victory or 
added strength to our determination to avenge defeat. 
Strange as it may seem, I had hardly mourned the 
missing limb, which molders back to dust beneath the 
shadow of the springing pines. We were young then. 
Blower, and life was sweet as vernal sunshine to the 
springing early buds. The thought of death was all the 
more irksome because of life's delightsomeness. To be 
maimed, I knew was to be branded through the years 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PirE. 11 

that were to come as one in power less than his fellows 
— bearing in life the visible sign-manual of death. To- 
day I almost blush to OAvn that I was then proud of 
the folded sleeve, because I had given the limb that 
filled it for the cause of human freedom. I did not 
once think of fame, nor of comparing myself with my 
fellows, whether the same had proved themselves 
meritorious or undeserving. I only thought that I had 
given up my blood to swell the rich tide that had been 
poured out to quicken the tree of liberty's second 
growth. Even the promotion that followed hard upon 
my hurt and bore date upon the day it happened, 
seemed a trivial thing compared with the high privilege 
I had enjoyed. 

In that day, when clods were lifted to the plane of 
heroes, and knightly souls were fired to marvelous 
achievment — in all those years of conflict — there had 
been one, whose devotion every true heart felt had far 
eclipsed all others, whose tender, serious, self-forgetful 
spirit brooded regretfully, yet encouragingly, over every 
battle-field. Our ^' Father Abraham " had become to 
every heart a presence real and benign, which repre- 
sented all that was noblest and most glorious in the 
struggle in which we were engaged. Strange as it may 
seem to the hard, material present, the sad, plain fea- 
tures of the Liberator were glorified to our eyes, so 
that we only saw benignity, devotion and a wisdom 
passing that of earth, in their calm austerity. He was 
to us the very impersonation of the spirit in which we 
fought, "Malice toward none and charity for all." 
Under its inspiration we bore " the banner of the free" 



12 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

from victory to victory, counting no hardships too 
great, and no perils too woeful, while we followed 
where it led. To us the homely features represented 
a new era, which we fondly hoped would dawn when 
all the evils of the past had been swept away, and 
peace should bring her shining harvest of prosperity. 
To us he was the forerunner of an era of unmatched 
blissfulness — a millennium which should cover the con- 
tinent and send the reflection of its glory across the 
seas. We did not light to triumph or to slay. The 
tender heart that led us on would have grieved, we 
fondly thought, had any impulse so low and base nerved 
our arms and steeled our hearts for conflict. He was 
the glorified incarnation of a beatific future. We 
kneAV he had forgotten himself in his devotion to a 
principle, of which the day in which he lived was but 
the seed time of the harvest which some distant morrow 
was to bring. His life had become so intermingled 
with the nation's future, in our thought, that we hardly 
counted him as mortal. We longed to see the load of 
care uplifted from his brow, and note the glint of jo- 
cund sunshine in his eye once more. He was our " Old 
Abe," calm and true and faithful. The touch of earth- 
iness was never in the picture which our loving fancy 
drew of him. We never once thought of him as having 
any personal interest in the events that were happening 
beneath his ken. It was only as the guardian angel of 
his country's honor and the future's hope that he over- 
looked the vast arena and smiled sadly but hopefully 
when blood sank into the thirsty sand. 

No vulgar sentiment debased him in our fancjr. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 18 

If we laughed at scurrilous jests, which made .the tour 
of the camps under his name, it was with no thought 
that the ascription of paternity was true ; but with a 
real gladness in the thought that the overburdened 
heart did sometimes find even a momentary relief from 
care in mirthful fancies. He was to us a tender leader, 
who, while he bore his own great burden uncomplain- 
ingly, found time to lighten ours, by pointing us to the 
future, ever bright to his eyes with the fruition of a 
divine hope. He was our Lincoln — the fruit of a mar- 
velous past, and the precursor of a future to be shaped 
and moulded by his aspirations — greater than the 
greatest, humbler than the lowliest ! 

So when death came to him in the hour of 
final triumph, it seemed that all other deaths had 
been in vain. The little we had done was naught. 
The heroism of our fallen comrades was but wasted 
manhood. With his last breath it seemed that the 
future's hope had departed. The free, proud, happy 
land which we had pictured resting peacefully be- 
neath his placid smile, while the loitering years 
went by and death unwilling brought at length the 
crown of immortality — this dream, which had filled so 
many millions of strong hearts, was blotted out for- 
ever. In his grave it seemed were buried all the 
brightness of the future. Those who were left, how- 
ever good and great they might be, seemed but base 
and mean in comparison with him^our immortal mar- 
tyr. The sunshine was blotted out of the triumph- 
lighted sky, and the horizon was again overcast. The 
shadow of the present veiled the future to our eyes. 



14 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

We know now, Blower, that this was but a foolish 
notion — a silly sentiment. The man whose death 
blotted out the sunlight of that mid-April day was not 
exceptionally great, if indeed he^ was great at all, 
judging by our later and, of course, better standards. 
Plain almost to uncouthness, he brought despair to the 
tailor's heart. Unversed in the wisdom of the schools, 
the highest culture yet esteems him but an uncut 
diamond — a possible brilliant. Counting the JSTation 
worthy to be saved only as it represented the idea of 
human liberty and equal right, he is regarded by the 
completer manhood of to-day as a man of one idea 
whom the fever of the times cast into accidental prom- 
inence. Simple as a child, he is, of course, not to be 
ranked among statesmen. Little given to denunciation 
and a stranger to self-glorification, he is naturally little 
esteemed by an age which accounts fault-finding the 
test of wisdom. Deeming the safety of the ISTation 
a matter above all price, he is held in- little esteem 
by a generation of publicists to v»diom an economic 
theory outweighs in sacredness the rights of man. 
Even they who have written of him — saving only 
one or two — seem to have accounted him great 
only in kindness, coarse wit, and a sort of instinctive 
cunning in the measurement of men and the forecasting 
of events. They depict him as fortunate, above all 
other men, in favoring accidents. 

Some have sought to popularize the story of his life 
by magnifying the superficial coarseness of his nature. 
Some who observed him closely saw nothing in his 
character but a strange compound of th*e trickster and 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 15 

the clown. To them his greatness was but accidental 
and his marvelous career neither a legitimate result of 
previous training, nor a beneficient miracle especially 
ordained for the accomplishment of marvelous ends. 
He was simply a lucky accident of an anomalous age. 
There can be no doubt that these men thought they 
knew him thoroughly. They came ver}^ near him; 
knew his thought ; laughed at his jests ; wondered at 
his success and still marvel at his fame. So far as they 
were capable of doing, they understood his nature, and 
no doubt have portrayed it truly. We cannot question 
the tree-toad's knowledge of the oak on which he 
dwells. 

The new life which has grown up in the land has 
very generally accepted their view. The thought which 
was the inspiration of yesterday is looked upon with 
kindly toleration to-day. We are told that the day of 
sentiment has passed, and the era of practicality begun. 
Gold is the criterion of value and ag^^regate wealth the 
real test of statesmanship. Patriotism is well enough 
as a reminisence, but parsimony is the key-note of pros- 
perity. Devotion to the rights of man is an innocent 
weakness ; gain the one thing needful. The capitalist's 
margins are more important to the Nation than justice 
to the oppressed. This is the wisdom of to-day, Blower. 
It seems harsh and cold, base and degrading even, to us. 
But we must remember that we are of yesterday — of 
that recent past, which is always wrong in its strictures 
of the present. To-day is always an iconoclast that 
tramples ruthlessly beneath his heel the idols before 
which yesterday bowed in adoration. We must be 



16 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

patient, Blower, and learn to see our gods debased 
without resentment, if not without sorrow. 

Little by little we are being taught the lesson of 
renunciation. This very year there was found in the 
legislature of the state which holds his ashes as a sacred 
trust, one — thank God there is yet hut one — who could 
oppose, in the name and by the authority of her people, 
an appropriation amounting to less than one-hundredth 
'part of a cent per capita — one-thousandtli of a cent on 
every million dollars of her wealth — to provide for the 
adornment of the tomb of Ahraliam Lincoln on this 
anniversary of his assassination ! 

It seems to us incredible. But next year there 
will perchance be many more like-minded with him. 
We may even see the day when the sentiment 
uttered in the legislature of a neighboring state, 
a few days since, shall become all but universal, and 
the champion and apologist, if not the leader, of 
the "Copperheads" of Indiana be generally looked 
upon as a nobler patriot, a more sagacious states- 
man, and a worthier citizen of the Kepublic than 
he who led her armies to victory. It is time, Blower, 
that we prepared ourselves to see the verdict of yester- 
day overthrown. "What we then deemed right may yet 
be accounted the most grievous wrong ; what we fool- 
ishly thought to be patriotism may yet be considered 
oppression, and what we believe the nation's highest 
glory may yet be held a folly bordering upon crime 
and hardly susceptible of excuse. 

Nevertheless, Blower, we will celebrate the double 
anniversary once more — the birth-hour of an epoch and 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 17 

the apotheosis of a hero-martyr. The flag shall float 
apeak upon the staff above our windovv, shedding 
blessings from its beauteous folds upon the rushing, 
heedless passers-by. Your polislied bowl shall be 
heaped with golden granules ; and as the smoke wreaths 
rise above its rim, we will think upon old times, revive 
almost-forgotten memories, and feel again the thrill of 
perished aspirations. We will still believe that self-for- 
getfulness is nobler than greed ; that patriotism is not 
to be measured by a gold standard ; that righteousness 
exalteth a nation; that justice to the lowly of earth is 
honor to the Highest in Heaven. When the children 
come — the bri^lit-eved heralds of to-morrow — we will 
tell them the stoiy of this day when the land awoke 
to a new life and the noblest of earth passed over to 
his reward. Perchance in their lives the seed sown in 
blood and watered with tears may spring into a fruit- 
age all the richer for the winter of its waiting. Let us 
not murmur, Blower, but steadfastly believe that " the 
future, God's fallow, though barren it seem," shall yet 
outvie the past in the ripe fruits of patriotic devotion. 
For many a year we used to drape the flag upon 
this anniversary. It w^as a foolish thing to do. We 
mourned when we ought to have exulted. We bewailed 
the woes of war when we ought to have magnified its 
blessings, and rejoiced in the glory it shed upon the 
land. What were the dead it left us in comparison 
with the fresher, nobler life it brought ? Honor and 
glory can not be measured even by blood and pain. So, 
too, with him who went out from us in the hour of 
victory. Why did we ever weep for him ? He passed 

2 



18 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

away when his work was done, leaving a memory un- 
smirched with evil, a fame unsullied with a thought of 
self. The purity of his life, the unselfishness of his de- 
votion, and the grandeur of his character are the price- 
less heritage of the ages. Suffering had not weakened 
his frame ; failure had not cast its bhght upon his fame ; 
malice had no opportunity to assail. In the vigor of 
his strength, at the zenith of his glory, in the very hour 
of victory, the booming cannon told at once his death 
and immortality ! Happy beyond compare was he in 
the hour and manner of his death. He did not live to 
see the breath of detraction wither his laurels, nor feel 
that the thought which inspired his life had lost all 
significance to the wisest and best of his countrymen. 
We mourn. Blower, for his great lieutenant who, lan- 
guishing, still lives ; but for him who died in the moment 
when war and peace met together to exalt his fame, 
let us don the garments of rejoicing and chant the 
songs of victory. 
April 14, 1885. 



"FEEEDOM AND THE EIGHT;^ 



'TTT'E are growing old, Blower, you and I. Yet the 
VV years that we have seen ai^e not so many. 
Hardly more than two score winters have passed over 
the Veteran's head. Save the empty sleeve, he shows 
little of the scath of life. His eye is as bright, his step 
as elastic, and his heart as young — almost as young, it 
seems — as when poor Joe pressed into his hand thy pol- 
ished bowl, and whispered in his ear a dying comrade's 
farewell message to his absent loved ones. His words 
as they come back to memory now, seem strangely 
overwrought. No doubt to-day would deem them 
sadly out of place upon a soldier's stiffening lips. 

" Tell them," he said, " I — died — for freedom — and 
— and" — oh precious last word, let it not be lost! 
How the feeble clay struggles with the dying thought! 
At length it comes, so faintly that the bowed ear 
hardly distinguishes between the whispered word, and 
the night wind's murmur — " and the — right !" 

No syllable of sorrow ! No thought of self ! No 
murmur of disappointment ! No w^ord of consolation 
for the father whose hope was blighted, for the mother 
whose heart yet waits expectant for his coming — fondly 
self-deceived by every manly footstep. Nay, not even 
a tender message for that unwedded widow whose 
heart was that day sealed forever against the thought 
of earthly love. 

19 



20 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

There was no sorrow in his eyes. The whispered 
words had no touch of sadness. The stillness that fol- 
lows in the wake of battle hung above the bloody field. 
The bright southern moon looked calmly down through 
the soft filmy foliage of the early spring-time. It 
lighted up the velvety half -grown leaves upon the giant 
oaks, that crowned the crest on which the stru^o-le 
had begun, until they seemed like silver clouds touched 
with the tender green of summer seas. It was here 
that the first few scattering shots were fired. The 
skirmishers had swarmed out of the wood beyond, 
crossed the narrow valley, and crept up the hillside 
toward the sunimit where his little force awaited them. 
It was only an outpost of the great army which lay 
behind. He was not charged with any momentous 
duty. The strap upon his shoulder marked only a 
subaltern's grade. He was onlj^ expected to give the 
alarm, and perhaps to check the enemy's advance an 
instant, while the waiting lines prepared themselves 
to meet the onset. 

The attack was not unexpected, and though the 
skirmishers wavered for a moment when they met his 
fire, the lines which followed hard upon their footsteps 
swept up the slope, scarring the great trunks with 
wasted volleys and tainting the balmy air of spring with 
sulphurous fumes, which overpowered the fragrance of 
the jasmine, while the little force which held the sum- 
mit fled, leaving their brave young commander bleeding 
at the foot of one of the great oaks which crowned the 
summit. Then the tide of battle ebbed and flowed 
back and forth on the broad plateau beyond. After 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 21 

a fierce conflict we forced them back over the ridge 
into the wood from whence they had come. As the 
sun went down the last hot hue of fire flashed out 
upon the fleeing enemy a half mile to the southward 
of their morning camp. 

As the night fell upon us, I traced backward the 
Dattle's bloody track in search of my friend. It is not 
any easy thing to do by daylight. The glare of conflict, 
while it photographs surrounding objects ineradicably 
upon the soldier's mind, so distorts distances and rela- 
tions that one is always surprised when he tries to 
retrace the steps he has taken under fire. It needs not 
the flight of seasons to disguise the battle field. Even 
when first "Ardennes waves above them her gi^een 
leaves," it is almost impossible for the soldier to desig- 
nate the spot where his comrade fell. The night made 
my task all the harder. 

The moon, which hung a great red ball on the edge 
of the horizon when I began my search, shifted the 
shadows and gave to a score of other rounded hills the 
outline of the little " knob " on which my friend had been 
posted. Stark faces shone cold and white in the shad- 
ows of the half -leaved trees, and stiffened limbs made 
grotesque figures in the moonlight. I stopped more 
than once to comfort some wounded sufferer. A thin, 
^vhite mist hung over the valley where the conflict had 
been fiercest. Voices came out of it at intervals. The 
low, indescribable moan that comes from the lips of 
many wounded men, rising and falling in alternate 
wailing cadances rose out of the silvery veil. The rum- 
ble of wheels away to the right told of trains that ^vere 



22 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

struggling to the front. A lantern shining dimly in 
the hazy depth, showed others on a like quest with 
myself. The sound of a spade grating on the stones 
bespoke the woefulness of a hasty burial on the battle- 
field. We knew the pursuit would begin at dawn, and 
that the offices of friendship must be 'speedily per- 
formed. As I passed along an unrecognized crest a 
groan came out of the shadow of a great yellow-leaved 
Spanish oak that stood in my path. I do not know 
why I stopped so suddenly, while my heart stood still 
Avith fear. Groans had not been rare along my way. 
Every soldier knows how often solitary dead are 
found upon the verge of the field of battle. You and 
I remember, Blower, finding on the very outer edge 
of a battle maelstrom, years after peace had drowned 
the din of arms, a whitened skeleton — a picket killed 
at his post, crouching behind a little natural mound, 
beneath a spreading cedar whose drooping boughs 
had hidden him from searching eyes. His rifle, rusty 
and black, lay beneath him, the hammer drawn back, 
the skeleton finger yet pressed upon the trigger. 

I paused and listened — another groan. It is strange. 
Blower, but even in that muffled moan I recognized my 
friend. Poor Joe ! He might have lived I think had 
help been at hand when he fell. But the hours which 
had intervened had drained his life. He had but few 
more moments and strength for few more words. He 
had expected me. It Avas a contract of long standing 
that after every battle we might share together, as 
soon as duty Avould permit, each should seek out the 
other. So he knew that I would come. Before the 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 23 

light had faded from the sky he had traced upon a bit 
of paper, with a twig dipped in his own blood, a few 
last wishes. With the same rude stylus he had written 
my name in bloody characters upon the buckskin cover 
that encased your bowl. Poor, brave old Joe! He 
clasped my hand weakly; said he knew I would come; 
told me there Avas no hope, and whispering the message, 
'' Tell them that I died for freedom and the right," fell 
asleep. The moon had found an opening through the 
leaves, and looked calmly down upon his face as he 
breathed his last. Poor Joe ! You were his dying gift, 
Blower. In all the years that have elapsed since then, 
I have never looked upon your bowl without thoughts 
of him. The buckskin case has long since worn a way, 
but the red, straggling letters, " J-a-c-k," are still clear 
to my eyes. The touch of the worn amber mouth- 
piece, which his lips have pressed so often, ever brings 
old memories back. 

He died for the right. Blower — "freedom and the 
right ! " So he said, so he thought, brave, self -forgetful 
knight, who sought not adventure nor the fame of valor- 
ous achievements, but the establishment of truth ! Yet, 
brave and chivalrous as he was, this true Sir Galahad 
was but a type of his time— that time to w^hicli we 
were proud to belong and which we still half wonder- 
ingly regret. A thousand men lay stark and cold upon 
that field who had rendered up their lives with glad- 
ness for the same idea — *' freedom and the right" — the 
right of every man to equal power and privilege with 
other men ! Say what we may. Blower, this was at the 
bottom of it all ! One side represented the rights of 



24 thp: veteran and his pipe. 

man, the other the rights of the master. The one meant 
equal rights for all ; the other special privileges for a 
class. It was only one phase of. the mighty conflict 
which is as old as man — the rights of the many against 
the encroachments of the few. 

There are some who teach to-day, and many who 
believe, that the cause for which so many died was of 
a narrower scope, and its upholders animated b}^ 
meaner motives. We better know the story of that 
day, Blower; but we are getting old, and our ideas are 
growing sadly old-fashioned, too. To smoke a pipe and 
believe in human right as a practical, tangible thing— 
a sentiment that ought to outrank and overpower all 
other political ideas — are in the highest degree absurd, 
to one who sucks rice-paper cigarettes, glorifies the 
Anglican ideal, and studies political philosophy in the 
sweet seclusion of his club. It is often asserted now- 
adays as an undeniable truth that the sole object of the 
IS'ational arms was to restore the National power, for- 
getful that this ])Ower was made worthy of preservation 
only by the simple fact that it was the sole representa- 
tive of the idea of individual rights and equality based 
upon the fact of humanity— poor Joe's " freedom and 
the right" Two great ideas faced each other in the 
struggle — the right of man to self-direction, and the 
right of one man to control and modify another's acts 
without his consent and against his will. Whether it 
be termed "Rebellion" "War between the States" or 
"War for separation," that is all there is of it. 

"Freedom and the rio^ht!" The niHit was dim 



o 



about us, under the great oaks, when he whispered these 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 25 

words, but Joe's eyes already beheld the light of an eter- 
nal day. He made no mistake in his last earthly mes- 
sage. If we fought merely to preserve our national 
domain from dismemberment, who shall say that we 
were right and they who stood over against us wrong ? 
Who gave to us the right " to have and hold," to compel 
twelve millions of people to accept, continue and main- 
tain one form of government rather than another — to 
remain a part of one nation instead of establishing 
a separate government ? We may claim that such right 
arises from the Federal compact with their sires, but 
had our fathers power to bind and loose forever 'i Were 
they infallible or their acts irrevocable ? Is the right 
to hold territory once assimilated, always a sacred one ? 
Is the subjugation of a people desiring self-government 
essentially a holy cause ? 

We did not fight for " our altars and our fires." 
No peril threatened our homes. It is said we fought 
to prevent secession. What gave us the right, the 
moral right I mean, to resist with force of arms such a 
movement. Joe's farewell message tells it all — " free- 
dom and the right." Because man had a right to lib- 
erty and life, to free access to that golden gate of op- 
portunity — "the pursuit of happiness" — and because 
our nation represented this idea, it was that we fought 
for " freedom and the right " — the freedom of some mill- 
ions who had been in bondage, and the rights of other 
millions which had been held in abeyance by unright- 
eous debasement of the freeman's privilege. We fought 
too, or thought we fought, for the freedom and the rights 
of the unnumbered millions who should stand between 



26 THE VETERAN AND HI^ PIPE. 

our day of conflict and the hither shore of eternity. 
We fought to secure infinite blessing to them and to 
avert infinite woe. We counted our cause supremely 
holy because success could add little to our own honor, 
prosperity, or ease, but offered all its rich harvest of 
blessing to other ages and an alien and oppressed peo- 
ple. Even their freedom was not all for which we 
fought, Blower. Poor Joe phrased it rightly under 
the gray-green boughs of early spring, while the whip- 
poorwill sent up his monotonous chant from the hill 
beyond, and the evening breeze brought the odor of 
the jasmine from the valley yet hidden by the pow- 
der smoke. " Freedom and the right," he said — their 
freedom and theh' rights whose liberty had been denied, 
and whose rights had been curtailed in the past — the 
freedom and the rights of man in all the future ! 

We thought we were right, BloAver ; Joe thought 
so. Those w^ho died and those who lived in that 
strange yesterday counted the conflict righteous in its 
purpose, infinite in its consequences, and inexorable 
in its behests. Were we right? Was Joe right. 
Blower ? Were the dead whose sweet blood nourishes 
oak and pine to-day — were they right or wrong ? The 
question seems sacrilegious. I fancy that the fire 
within your bowl grows redder and hotter as my lips 
frame the inquiry. Yet it is a question which must be 
asked and answered ; not by us, but by the American 
people ; not by to-day only, but by many unrisen to- 
morrows. 

If we were right, then some (me must have been 
wrong. If "the blue" stood for righteousness, then as- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 27 

suredly " the gray " meant oppression. Light and dark- 
ness cannot coexist. Yet it will not do to-day to inti- 
mate that those who stood over against us then were 
wrong. To impute error to them, even be it never so 
hghtly done, is accounted not only an act of folly, but a 
grievous wrong. 

I will uot do them wrong ; I rather choose 
To wrong the dead . 

Why are opposites irreconciliable, or antipodes in- 
capable of conjunction ? Why should right be right, 
or wrong be wrong ? If only we might say, " There is 
no right," we might escape the odious inference of 
another's wrong. Or if both might be in the right, there 
could be no ground for blame. Perhaps t-Jiis may be 
true. Freedom may not have been exactly right, nor 
slavery entirely wrong. Perchance the Nation did not 
stand for freedom after all, nor the Confederacy mean 
injustice to the weak and oppression by the strong ; 
Joe may have been wrong even at the last. Unfortu- 
nately sincerity is no reliable test of truth. Something 
more than honesty of purpose is needed to constitute 
right conduct. Honesty is always the chief ally of 
fanaticism, and Joe may have been a fanatic. 

It is said that the voice of the people is the voice of 
God, but that it must be " the still, small voice," the 
outcome of the sober second thought which speaks the 
will of the Eternal — not the voice of passion nor the 
roar of the excited populace. Amid the tumult of 
arms we are told that not only the laws are silent, but 
the voice of reason also. It is only after the frenzy of 
conflict has ]>assed away that we must look for that 



28 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

calm judgment of the event which shall bear the test 
of time and truly deserve to represent the findings of 
the infinite mind upon the facts of yesterday. That 
time would seem at length to have come. It is twenty 
years since the last battle-shock sent its rapturous thrill 
through the hearts of war-worn veterans. During 
that time one-half of those who then lived and 
wrought have gone to their eternal rest. To-day sits 
in calm and unbiased judgment upon yesterday. A 
new life makes up the verdict. Was Joe right accord- 
ing to this judgment ? 

Alas, Blower, there is every reason to believe that 
the Nation of to-day is ready to ignore the spirit and 
the works of yesterday. Of those who fought against 
us hardly one in ten thousand has admitted that they 
were in the wrong, or that we were in the right. The 
slave's freedom, as a formally accomplished fact, a 
state established by legal enactment, they admit. 
That the right to free the slave and enfranchise the 
freedman, inhered in the Nation, or that the " freedom 
and the right " for which Joe fought, or any privileges 
based thereon, are founded in natural justice, they stub- 
bornly and almost universally deny. They admit the 
failure of their hope of separate dominion, and declare 
their willingness to abide by the arbitrament of the 
sword ; but twenty years have not sufficed to convince 
them of its righteousness, or lead them to admit that a 
warfare, waged in support of slavery, contained any 
element of wrong. On the contrary, they vaunt 
their submission as a meritorious thing ; and boast of 
their forbearance in recognizing and tolerating a gov- 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 29 

ernment reestablished, as they claim, by injustice and 
oppression. 

One who has just been chosen to represent the 
power and dignity of this government at a foreign 
court, at a public dinner of congratulation given him 
by admiring friends in the late capital of the Confed- 
eracy, recently declared in a tone of proud conde- 
scension, that those who fought for secession were now 
loyal to the IS'ational Government, though its au- 
thority was ''founded on a gross and bloody viola- 
tion of public rights." 

The Confederate hosts in battle array, contended 
that the " freedom and right " for which Joe thought 
he died, were in fact wrongs to which the}^ would 
never submit. Today they aver that they have sub- 
mitted thus far to such wrong — a wrong " founded on a 
perversion of public right," remember. Blower — and 
claim by such formal subirission, to have acquired the 
right to practically annul the privileges conferred upon 
an oppressed people by the conquerors of their 
oppressors. Only yesterday an arrogant mouthpiece 
of the sentiment of the South, speaking through the 
pages of a great magazine^ — one who not content with 
his simple signature, adds thereto in '' small caps " 
what no other writer deems necessary, the place of his 
residence — this representative thinker of the lately re- 
bellious states declares that the " victorious armies of 
the Xorth could not have enforced and maintained ' at 
the South ' the policy of the civil rights bill " — a " bill " 
which to-day is the law of the land, and most unques- 



30 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPJ:. 

tionably a part of "the right" for which poor Joe 
thought he was rendering up his hfe. 

But this is not alL One can hardly blame a proud 
people for refusing to admit themselves to have been in 
the wrong. It is their right to do so, and I am not sure 
we do not all like them the better for it, even you and I, 
Blower ; but they have no right to expect or demand 
that we who fought with Joe, or the nation whose honor 
Ave maintained, shall admit their claim or recognize in 
them a fitness to bear rule or represent authority be- 
cause of it. Yet this very thing is what we have done. 
The public sentiment even of the North declares 
against the thought of yesterday. With clamorous 
shamefacedness we cry out for forgetfulness and im- 
plore the shield of oblivion for our acts and motives. 
We insist on leaving a dead past to bury its dead. 
The present chooses among the men of yesterday with 
exceeding care, one who never yet has uttered a single 
word of commendation of that ''freedom and the 
right " for which Joe died, as the Nation's executive 
head. Two of the great departments of government 
are placed under the control of men who yet stoutly 
maintain the moral turpitude of the National cause. 
Men are selected to represent the country abroad who 
have defiantly refused to recognize the righteousness of 
the results of the conflict, and thereby have even cast a 
doubt on their own citizenship. And worst of all, 
saddest of all, old friend, those of our Northern kith 
and kin who rejoiced when our arms suffered reverse, 
and mourned when victory sat upon our banners — 
those who mocked at Lincoln in his agony and de- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 81 

nounced Grant in the hour of triumph — these men are 
singled out through all the land to typify the thought 
of to-day and represent the power and authority of the 
government saved from destruction by the valor and 
self-sacrifice of such as he whose heroism w^e recall on 
this anniversary. It is hard enough to see the flag 
placed at half-mast in honor of one whose chosen rela- 
tion to our government was that of a traitor and an 
enemy, Avho inspired from the secure shelter of a neu- 
tral territory the incendiary's torch and the murderer's 
dagger ; but it is a thousand times harder to see those 
who exulted in Joe's death vaunting themselves to- 
day upon the overthrow of the principles for which he 
fought. 

Yet we will not be disconsolate, old friend. If 
yesterday was but half right, it Avill stand foreover 
famous in history for what it believed and what it did. 
Joe may not have died for " freedom and the right ;" 
nay, he may have given his life for folly and the wrong, 
but he did it freely and gladly ; and we will ever think 
of his dying face glorified by the moonlight shining 
through the rift in the soft spring foliage as that of 
one w^earing the halo of self-sacrifice, which alone en- 
titles mortals to claim immortality. 

April 31, 1885. 



HIGH WATEE MAEK. 



AS the season advances during which military 
operations are possible, each day becomes an 
anniversary, Blower. By many of our comrades this 
day is no doubt regarded as one of the saddest and 
most humiliating in its reminiscences of all those which 
mark the progress of the long, uncertain conflict be- 
tween freedom and slavery, or more properly, between 
the right to be free and the privilege of enslavement. 
Yet in truth this day, twenty-two years ago, marked 
the climax of our peril and the beginning of the 
end. Up to that time the Confederacy had met with 
no disaster which a great victory on the Potomac might 
not at any time overbalance. Then it received a hurt 
for which there was no cure. Looking out of our prison 
windows on that day we noted the effect of the blow 
that fell upon the heart of the Confederacy. 

Only the day before, its congress had prescribed the 
banner that should wave above its embattled hosts, and 
had defined the escutcheon which they fondly hoped to 
place among the permanent emblems of national sover- 
eignty. It bore across its face a significant appeal to 
the God of battles. With the morrow's setting sun men 
looked into each other's faces and with trembling lips 



Note— May 3, 1808. The battle of Chancellorsvllle was fought on this 
day, and " Stonewall '' Jackson received the wovnids of which he died on the 
10th of the same niontli, which latter date was most appropriately chosen as 
the Confederate " Memorial Day." 

32 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 33 

inquired, '' Is it thus that the Avenger answers ? " For 
the first time in the liistory of the young nation the 
gleam of hostile sabers was seen from the dome beneath 
which her legislators were assembled, and armed foes 
for the first time entered the city's gates. Yet it was 
a day of humiliation and disaster for the great Repub- 
lic also. He " who maketli the wrath of man to praise 
Him" on that day not only rebuked those who wrongly 
trusted, but smote those who arrogantly scorned. It 
is not without reason that the Confederate survivors of 
that struggle adopted as their " Memorial Day " the 
one which marked the immediate result of this day's 
mishap to their cause. This day saw the beginning 
of its overthrow ; Appomattox only brought the end. 

At the outset of the war there can be no doubt that 
the apparent chances of success were very clearly in 
favor of the national government. We have been ac- 
customed to magnify our difficulties, Blower ; but in 
comparison with those which faced the Confederacy, 
history will declare them to have been not worthy of 
consideration. Indeed, so overwhelming were our 
advantao^es as an established e^overnment with a work- 
ing organization, and recognized national position, that 
those who prided themselves upon their wisdom, and 
foolishly regarded war as merely a commercial venture — 
a trial of dead strength — who regarded numbers and 
equipment as the chief elements of an army's effective- 
ness — did not hesitate to predict a brief conflict and 
assured victory for the national forces. If a man of 
capacity and will, unfettered by the limitations which 
an absent and over-cautious superior imposed, and un- 
3 



84 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

trammeled by the requirements of counselors who 
demanded the defeat of the enemy without the injury 
of friend or foe — in other words, if a competent com- 
mander having only military- aims in view, had held 
undivided control of the resources of our government 
at the outset, there can hardly be a doubt that these 
predictions would have been fulfilled. Under compe- 
tent leadership, with thorough administrative support, 
the resources of the national government oughi to have 
swept the fungus growth of rebellion out of existence 
almost in a day. 

The newspaper clamor, " On to Richmond," which 
for a score of years has been objurgated as the senseless 
overture of the first great disaster to our arms, the de- 
feat of Bull Run, was in truth but the voice of an 
universal instinct. The seed of revolt may germinate 
slowdy, but once it bursts its capsule no wisdom or 
foresight can measure its growth. A baby's foot 
crushes the tender twig to-day ; a giant's strength is 
powerless to bend the towering oak to-morrow. If the 
government had used its resources at the outset to 
destroy its enemy instead of showing such anxiety to 
defend itself, the Confederacy would have been crushed 
as easily as the eggshell to which it was so often 
likened. To a warlike people, with a warlike spirit 
and warlike purpose, the mihtary problem of 1861 was 
not difficult or doubtful. It was the will to conquer, 
the determination to overthrow, obliterate and punish 
that was wanting rather than the powder. We hesitated 
to strike lest some one should be hurt. Instead of 
hurling all our power on the presumptuous enemy, we 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 85 

waited for him to gather strength and make the 
attack in his own wa}^ and at his own time. Even 
when we finally assumed the offensive, it was only to 
meet the aggression of the enemy. The battle of Bull 
Run was fought upon the ground it made historic only 
because the neglect of a subordinate prevented the 
orders of the Confederate commander from being pub- 
lished to his lieutenants in time to allow the forward 
movement to begin at daylight, as he intended. A 
day's precipitation or half a day's delay and the Con- 
federacy would have been shattered into fragments by 
the first great battle shock. A day before and Jack- 
son and his forces would not have been in the fight. A 
half -day later and the Confederates would have been 
the attacking party. In either event the issue can 
hardly be regarded as doubtful. The Nation, because 
of its established and consolidated character, was able 
to endure the strain of defeat. The Confederacy — a 
half-established venture in government — would have 
been hopelessly overwhelmed by a single great catastro- 
phe, followed up by a vigorous assault, for which abund- 
ant material was at hand. Up to that time the advan- 
tage was very clearly with the National Government. 

From that hour, however, the conditions were 
reversed. On the 22d day of July, 1861, the Confed- 
eracy was a thousand times stronger than on the 
morning of the 21st. From that day until the 2d day 
of May, 1863, the odds were with the Confederacy. 
If Jackson had been at the head of the Confederate 
army, instead of Johnson ; if Jefferson Davis had not 
been the strange compound of vanity and vacillation 



36 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

that he is; if Beauregard had been able to see any- 
thino- outside his own shadow- in the sunshine of suc- 
cess, we should have never seen the peaceful, quiet 
year of waiting that ensued, while McClellan prepared 
and polished the ponderous machine he deemed neces- 
sary to enable him to face with fear and trembling the 
cohorts of the foe. But even this was not suflRcient to 
assure the triumph of the National army. The mag- 
nificently equipped battalions which set out by land 
and sea to conquer the capital of the Confederacy, in 
the spring of 1802, were not enough to restore the 
equilibrium of chances. Even then the odds remained 
with the Confederates. 

They had three great advantages : a united people, 
a defensive warfare, and a government made bold 
to audacity by the magnitude and peril of their 
undertaking. On the other hand, three things con- 
spired to endanger or delay the success of the Union 
arms: an overestimate of the enemy's prowess, an 
uncertain public sentiment, and a strange admixture 
of military and pohtical motives. Of the tw^o great 
armies which faced each other at that time, the one 
excelled in numbers, the other in spirit. The one had 
behind it a nation fertile in resources, but divided in 
purpose. The other represented a people weak in 
administrative and constructive development, but uni- 
fied by a common aim, and rich in the audacity which 
self-confidence inspires. The one had the sea for its 
ally, while the other had the mountains and the rivers 
for their bulwarks. But above all things, these armies 
differed in the fact that one numbered among* its lead- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 37 

ers Thomas Jonathan Jackson, the "Stonewall" behind 
whose genius for Avar the Confederacy rested in confi- 
dent security, while the other had among its recognized 
leaders none worthy ©f comparison with him in the 
power of achievement. At the West, it is true, the 
National cause was developing men who were destined 
to exhibit qualities hardly excelled in history. Grant, 
Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas, the wondrous galaxy of 
western leaders around whose names clusters the glory 
of the closing years of war, had as yet only given prom- 
ise of power. Leaving out of consideration Meade, 
whose painstaking care gave us Gettysburg, and whose 
caution allowed Lee's army to escape destruction, these 
are the only Generals on the Federal side who dis- 
played a capacity to originate strategic movements, 
conduct great campaigns, win decisive victories, and 
destroy opposing armies. This is no disparagement to 
others, BloAver. There are in all armies thousands of 
good soldiers and hundreds of good lieutenants, but 
rarely more than one gi^eat leader. 

On this day twenty-two years ago. Blower, Grant 
was only the victor of Henry and Donelson, the un van- 
quished defender of Pittsburg Landing, and the long- 
baffled assailant of Yicksburg. At that time he was 
just beginning that movement which crowned him con- 
queror of the " Gibraltar of the South." Sherman was 
but a corps commander under him ; Thomas was only 
Kosecrans' lieutenant, and Sheridan's ambition looked 
no higher than the division he had just received. Our 
great leaders were yet in embryo. Meade alone was 
neari^r.g the zenith of an unexpected fame. 



38 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

For the Confederates, however, this was the chmac- 
teric hour. Lee stood among a group of faithful and 
unquestioning subordinates, first only in rank and in 
the power to direct and utilize the energies of others.- 
Rarely indeed has any leader seen about him such an 
array of confident, harmonious co-workers. Those two 
elements of discord, Johnston and Beauregard, had 
been eliminated from the army of IS'orthern Virginia, 
and Lee stood at the head of a host among whose 
captains rivalry was unknown and generous emulation 
always rife. When the sun rose on that day the Con- 
federate cause was at its zenith. "When the morrow 
came it had won a great victory, and begun that decline 
which ended only at Appomattox. 

A few days before an overconfident young general, 
Avhose tongue had lately wagged boastfully against the 
great, patient, self-forgetful heart at "Washington, 
through whose favor he had been exalted, had crossed 
the river which had so long separated the hostile arma- 
ments, and offered battle to his great opponent. He 
brought with him an army splendidly equipped, well- 
drilled and finely officered. Its veteran rank and file 
were smarting from the sting of undeserved reproaches. 
Its commander bore in his pocket the generous rebuke 
of the President, who, referring to his insubordinate 
boasting, only urged him to make good his claim to 
supreme command by winning a decisive victory. 
S])urred by this incentive Hooker had, after the most 
elaborate preparation, finally made ready to deliver 
battle to the foe whom two years of victory had made 
doubly formidable. His army lacked but two things 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 39 

to insure victory — a leader who could command like 
Lee, and a general who could win battles like Jackson. 
, That was a terrible May Day our comrades cele- 
brated under the fresh-leaved oaks at Chancellorsville, 
Blower. All day "in even scale the battle hung." In 
the capital of the Confederacy, fifty miles away, we 
heard tlie thunder of the guns, borne on the soft 
spring breeze. From the windows of Libby we saw 
the glare of beacon-lights that marked the course of 
our daring troopers as they swept around the beleagu- 
ered city. The veterans who guarded the prison looked 
grave, but did their duty with soldierly precision. The 
next day our forces pressed the enemy backward, for 
Jackson and his men were not there. Our vainglorious 
vouno^ commander exulted in the thouo-ht that he had 
gone to succor the threatened capital. But when "the 
sun hung Ioav o'er the westling hill," with the swoop 
of an eagle on his prey, Jackson burst upon the unpro- 
tected and unsus]:)ecting right flank and swept the thin 
line back upon itself, while the shrill shouts that 
heralded Confederate success, thrilled with terror the 
soldiers who were preparing to bivouac after the day's 
weary conflict. They knew that thunderbolt of war, 
" the right hand of Lee," was upon them and his name 
had so long been a synonym of victory that almost the 
whole army fled before him, and the young leader who 
had already begun to dream of victory had now to 
exert himself to the utmost to save what was left of 
his shattered battalions. The Confederacy was again 
victorious, but Jackson would command no more. 
His loss far outweighed the triumph of their arms. 



40 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

The unerring instinct of an imperiled people saw in his 
death the presage of disaster. The bulletins of victory 
could not restore confidence to the dwellers in the 
capital. 

The veterans who had guarded the prison were 
hastily marched away and their places supplied with 
undisciplined volunteers. The terror and apprehension 
that were apparent on all sides, the hosts of frightened 
fugitives whom we could see from the prison windows 
fleeing from the city, all these things led us to believe 
the rumor of Confederate defeat, and discredit the reas- 
suring dispatches that followed close upon its heels. 
That night the fires that marked the track of our 
cavalry were nearer still. - A young officer was brought 
in to share our imprisonment, captured almost within 
the city limits. The '' home guards," who kept watch 
and ward over us, were greatly excited. Few slept that 
night in Libby. In that upper room where almost half 
a thousand were confined there were exulting songs and 
sleepless vigils. Every eye watched with anxious 
scrutiny the points of light that told of the raiders' 
presence. 

Every moment we looked with foolish expectancy 
to see the flame of battle sweep over some dark and 
silent crest. Was not Jackson dead? Did not our 
custodians think defeat was sure if Jackson no longer 
lived to lead? So we sung songs in the darkness and 
waited for the dawn and '' Fighting Joe," who needed 



* Kilpatrick's cavalry raid came so near the city that the light of its fires 
was easily seen. The city might unquestionably have been seized and 
burned by them if the true condition of affairs had been understood. 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 41 

all his courage and all his skill that day to rescue his 
army from the disaster following the last blow of the 
dead chieftain. While w^e crowded about the low case- 
ments, peering between the bars at the signal lights 
that flashed along the hills beyond, a voice full of 
malignant hate informed us that the guards had orders 
to fire on any who showed themselves at the windows. 
Even as he spoke a bullet whizzed through the open 
casement and buried itself in the joists above. The 
cool evening breeze came in through the narrow sashes, 
where four hundred panting, sweltering men waited 
for its balmy breath. But the sentries were ordered to 
fire upon any one whom it tempted near the grating, 
or whom the hope of rescue induced to watch the beacon 
lights which shone above the city's roofs. 

It was a night we shall never forget, Blower — a 
night of hope, anxiety and rage. It is said. Blower, 
that the slender young o^cer who gave the order 
which put a dead-line in front of every window in that 
crowded room was a young Marylander, whose desire 
to serve his country's enemies was so intense that he 
rted across the border, and begged to be made an as- 
sistant jailer in the most famous of rebel prisons. It 
was not a hard or dangerous place, and decidedly not 
an unprofitable one. It was a queer position for an 
enthusiastic Maryland rebel to select in which to dis- 
play his devotion to the Southern cause, but patriotism 
takes on curious guises and covets strange tasks at 
times. It is said. Blower, but I can not believe it true, 
that this assistant of the fiery-tempered soldier who 
was the commandant of the prison, this imported 



42 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 



•I 



deputy-turnkey, after various characteristic evolutions, 
has become the right hand of the Secretary of the 
Treasury of the United States, under whose direction 
and control our "civil service" is to be purified and 
" off ensive partisans " decapitated "in the interests of 
good government " and a " reunited country." If it 
indeed be true we can well understand, Blower, that his 
experience in Libby will enable him to select with 
great readiness those " offensive partisans" with whose 
countenances he may there have become familiar, and 
whose names he may recall as appearing on the reg- 
ister of that institution. Whether the newly-devised 
system of bookkeeping* which has been adopted in 
the Treasury, was modeled on that which prevailed in 
Libby or not, will probably never be known. It has 
at least some features in common with the system there 
prevailing ; the funds on hand are counted among its 
liabilities ; hard cash is nbt considered an available 
asset, and the surplus is redeemed without the for- 
mality of being paid out. 

We have no objection to the ex-Confederate, 
Blower. The manhood which maintained the " lost 
cause" is worthy of all honor. We w^ould bedeck with 
flowers the graves of their dead as readily as the last 
resting-places of our comrades — not because they were 
right. Blower, but because they were brave. To all of 
those who fought we accord the meed of sincerity, 
and to many of those who were for the wrong we 

* One of the first acts of Mr. Cleveland's administration was to chang-e 
the form of the customary monthly statement of the public debt so as to re- 
duce the apparent siu'plus. Whatever may have been the real motive, it 
was an act which could not fail to arouse suspicion. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 43 

render unbounded admiration. If they have surrend- 
ered not only the weapons of warfare but the princi- 
ples on which rebellion rested, the Republic can 
have no worthier citizens. If they still count the 
reestablishment of National power ''a great public 
wrong," have "no regrets to offer and no apologies 
to make " for having aided in carrying on a rebellion 
founded on slavery, and demanding a myriad heca- 
tombs of our best lives, w^e can not, with all our char- 
ity, count them worthy to control the policy of the 
country, and shape the destinies of a free people. But 
if they must bear sway, if those who supported the 
Confederacy, and still believe the " lost cause " to have 
been a holy one, are rightfully and lawfully entitled to 
control and administer the government, let us at least 
hope and pray that the bravest and best may be taken, 
and the meanest and basest be left. A deputy jailer 
of Libby^ and the engineer of the Alabamaf may be 
very good men as men go, but the flavor of an un- 
pleasant notoriety renders them hardly appropriate 

* Eugene Higgins, a well-known Baltimore "heeler," having a most 
fragrant record not only in connection with the politics of that city, but 
for his intimate relations with its gambling dens was made "Appointment 
Clerk " of the Treasury Department immediately on Mr. Cleveland's acces- 
sion. He is said to have solicited and obtained a place as an under keeper 
In Libby Prison during the war. His appointment was claimed to be the 
especial act of Mr. Manning, but it has been shrewdly guessed that he was 
found valuable in transacting certain private negotiations in which the 
President was personally interested and thereby became both necessary and 
dangerous to an Executive pledged to " Reform." His continuance in prac- 
tical control of the lesser patronage of the Ti'easury Department is not only 
a disgrace to the administration, but a direct and positive insult to the 
decent manhood of the country. 

+ Among the early appointments of Mr. Cleveland was that of an 
engineer of the famous Rebel cruiser, Alabama^ to a lucrative place under 
the government. 



44 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

exponents of the National power or fitting agents of 
the highest executive authority. 

Let us hope that those who fought witli Jaclvson at 
Chancellorsville may be preferred to those who bullied 
and insulted the unfortunate victims of war's reverses- 
within the " prison bounds " of the Confederacy. Let 
us not be too censorious, however, Blower. Those 
who rule by Caesar's leave must obey his nod ; and we 
must not forget that even the worst of those who 
upheld the power of the Confederacy and did its will, 
whether on the field of battle or in the prison-pen, are 
worthier of preferment than that spawn of Northern 
life, the aborted monsters whom freedom nourished 
only to hear their snarls as they hung upon the track 
of her armies, and jeered the sons who fell in her de- 
fense. Better the meanest of those who served the 
cause of treason than even the best of those wlio wished 
it loell hit dared not serve I " 

May 2, 1885. 



"THE PEESIDEI^T VISITS GETTYS- 
BURG;^ 



THIS was a headline in every morning paper from 
Maine to California to-day, Blower. It was the 
first thing that caught my eye after I had lighted the 
fragrant granules in your bowl and folded the damp 
sheet upon the desk so that one hand might hold it — not 
so easy a thing for the Veteran to do, by the way, as any 
one may see who Avill undertake the fofding of one of 
our mammoth dailies with a single hand. Millions of 
eyes have no doubt read it already ; others will note 
it during the day, and before the week is ended prac- 
tically the whole country will know that the President 
"visited" Gettysburg on Monday. Yery many will 
curiously scan the brief and colorless paragraph which 
relates what the President did not do and did not say 
upon this visit to Gettysburg. Some no doubt will 
smile and some may sneer, but there are many, 
Blower, who will read the pitiful recital as we did, 
through the mist of gathering tears. 

Who is this President, Blower, and why should he 
visit Gettysburg ? What is this Gettysburg, that any 
one should care to climb its hills, measure its green slopes, 
guess the grade of its declivities, and trace the lines of 
its escarped crests ? Why should tears dim the Vet- 
eran's sight as he reads all there was to tell of the 

45 



46 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

President's visit — the hints of what he saw and heard, 
the full story of what he said and did ? 

I can well imagine one of the children who some- 
times invade this sanctuary consecrated to memories of 
the past, asking such queries in wondering tones, for 
Gettysburg is fast becoming an insignificant fact of a 
past which we are taught that duty requires us only to 
forget. To them the President's visit to this historic 
amphitheater means no mo/e than if he had gone to 
Baltimore or tarried for a day in the little town made 
memorable by his birth. To them laughter and tears 
are alike inexplicable as a result of the perusal of this 
paragraph. With us, Blower, it is far different. Yes- 
terda}^ and to-day have rarely been brought so close 
together, or been shown in such vivid contrast as by 
this visit of the President to Gettysburg. 

Who is the President who yesterday visited Gettys- 
burg? He is the executive head of a great nation, 
whose blazon flaunts the proud assertion that it has 
welded many peoples into one great power — that in 
its unity are hidden many peaceful and harmonious 
constituents. It boasts of many states in one nation, 
many peoples in one country, many rulers in one sov- 
ereignty. The President represents, in the eyes of the 
world, the power and dignity of a nation builded 
upon equality of rights and parity of power among 
all its constituent elements. Khode Island stands side by 
side with New York in power and influence in the na- 
tional councils and in the selection of the representa- 
tive of its authority. As states — as constituent ele- 
ments of the whole — the least is equal to the greatest. 



THE VErEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 47 

It matters not how weak the lesser may become or 
how potent the greater — how narrow the Hmits of one 
or how broad the boundaries of another may be, the 
justice which holds with even hand the scales upon our 
nation's arm, doles out to each, one equal measure of 
constituent power. So, too, among the people of the 
various states themselves, the national power is in like 
manner distributed. To every one hundred and fifty- 
four thousand of the citizens of the United States, in 
this tenth decade of organic union, is given one voice in 
the national council — one aliquot part of the sovereign 
power. To each one of these citizens of the republic, 
belongs also an undivided share of the power and 
priyilege devolving upon the whole. Well may we 
boast, therefore, that our nation is the fruit of liberty 
and equality — a unity arising from equally endowed 
numbers. E phtribios unum — out of man}^ states one 
state — out of many wills one sovereign — out of many 
equal rights one all-protecting power. The President 
is the head of this nation, the incarnation of its author- 
ity, the representative of its sovereign will. He is ou7' 
President, Blower, and though he may not in all things 
represent our individual will, he is clothed upon with 
our modicum of power, exercises the authority pri- 
marily vested in us, and is charged with the preserva- 
tion not only of our rights, but of that national honor 
which makes our share in the whole a thing of price- 
less value or a heritage of immeasurable shame. 

I take it. Blower, that this power of which the 
President is, for the time being the trustee, is nothing 
less than that " freedom and the right " for which poor 



48 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

Joe SO willingly rendered up his life. To him the free- 
dom of the citizen and the right of the sovereign were, 
in their last analysis, one and the same thing. The 
right was but the basis on wjiich the privilege of free- 
dom rested, its untrammeled exercise being to him the 
very essence of human liberty. By the forms of law 
one man, the President, is made the representative of 
this freedom and the trustee of this universal right, as 
well as the guardian of both. If all those whose. con- 
joint wills make up the national sovereignty, had the 
privilege of free and voluntary choice in his selection, 
then he is by right, as well as form, the trustee of this 
sovereignty. If to any considerable extent the free- 
dom of individual choice was by any means debarred 
to any lawfully entitled to exercise the same, then the 
right on which the privilege of every citizen is based, 
has been invaded, and that equity which no informality 
can defeat and no lapse of time debar, stamps his selec- 
tion with the brand of fraud. Be this as it may, how- 
ever, for the time being, he represent us ; he is our de- 
fctcto head ; the trustee of our rights and the represent- 
ative of our sovereignty. His acts are valid, and he 
binds not only himself, but the American people, by 
his words and deeds. Our honor is in his keeping, and 
he has power to cover us with shame. He is our Presi- 
dent, Blower, and by that fact entitled to something- 
more than our formal obedience and regard. 

It is true that the usurper who is inducted into 
office with all the forms of law does not thereby acquire 
title to the throne. The oaths which Gloster took at 
Westminster did not make the blood-stained ruffian 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 49 

rightful king. Underneath the sign and seal of office, 
under all the trappings of authority, yet remains for- 
ever quick, the equity which reaches to the root of 
right. It is charged — and there is none that can with 
reason or truth deny — that but for the direct or indi- 
rect disfranchisement of voters by the hundred 
thousand, but for the fact that thousands upon thou- 
sands of citizens whose rights were purchased Avith the 
blood of heroes, were debarred from the free exercise 
of those rights, or their ballots when cast deprived of 
due effect, this man who bears the title of President 
to-day would never have been asked to meet with vet- 
erans at Gettysburg. There is probably not any man 
of reasonable intelligence who believes that if the 
voters of certain southern states had been allowed 
freely and without fraud, compulsion, or the fear of 
harm, to have cast their ballots as they chose, and had 
them counted as they desired, the verdict in at least 
five of those states avouM not have been other than it 
was, and thereby the entire results of the national 
election have been reversed. No one can question this 
who will study for a moment the statistics of popula- 
tion, the returns of the election, the facts of the recent 
past and the continuous and reiterated assertion on the 
part of the whites of those states of their right and 
determination to rule, regardless of the will or right of 
their colored fellow-citizens, or of the whites who were 
politically affiliated with them. 

So far as the right is concerned. Blower, the 
President, who went to Gettysburg yesterday, is a 
usurper. He represents the I^ational power only 
4 



50 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

because some thousands of her constituent sover- 
eigns were deprived of their freedom — of their right 
to rule. Such wrong touches every other man's right. 
]^ot only is every citizen entitled to exercise his 
own aliquot part of the national power, but he has a 
right to demand— nay, his own right may be made null if 
he does not demand and secure — for every other citizen 
the same opportunity. If fraud or violence is to be 
justified by the result, if the forms of law alone are 
necessary to lawful sovereignty, then any conspiracy 
which shall direct its efforts toward vitiating the ballot 
or corrupting the results, may thereby rightfully estab- 
lish itself in povfer, and continue indefinitely in control 
of the government. IN'ay, Blower, it is not, and it 
never can be, true that the spurious vote, the cor- 
rupted ballot, the debased verdict of a people, can con- 
stitute any better title to authority than the violent 
usurpation of a crown, or the enforced assent of Lords 
and Commons. The oath of ofiice taken on the east 
porch of the Capitol, in full view of applauding thou- 
sands, no more confers the right to exercise the execu- 
tive functions of the government than the assumption 
of the crown of England in Westminster Hall b}^ force 
of arms, establishes the rightful succession to the 
throne of Britain. '' Freedom and the right " cannot 
thus easily be thwarted. The sovereign's right cannot 
be divested by the abuse of legal forms. The Presi- 
dent who OAves his election to fraud may sit undis- 
turbed in the seat of power, but he is none the less a 
usurper whose rule is based on the ravished rights — 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 51 

not of a competitor — but of many thousands of his 
fellows, the collective sovereigns of the republic. 

I believe these things, Blower. I do not doubt that 
this man wearing the title and exercising the preroga- 
tives of the President does so by virtue of a violent, 
unlawful and premeditated disregard of the sovereign 
rights of a majority of the voters of at least five states 
of the Union, and a consequent debasement and defi- 
ance of the sovereign right of every other citizen of 
the republic. His rule is not " of the people nor by the 
people," yet let us pray God that it be "for the people." 

The right of the usuper, the just and reasonable 
privilege of the de facto sovereign is, that he shall be 
recognized and supported by all good subjects of the 
realm, save only when he comes in conflict with rightful 
authority. This rule is based upon the public good, 
Avhich can only be subserved by the recognition of 
some dominant authority. It is analogous to the rule 
of private right which vests in the possessor a title 
good against all the world, saving only the owner. 
The President who went to Gettysburg yesterday is 
one who, with all the forms of law, but with a fraudu- 
lent title, entered upon a demesne of which he is enti- 
tled to hold possession until he is ousted by one, not 
merely armed Avith formal power, but having also 
indubitable title. 

As good citizens, therefore, as those who desire the 
welfare of our land, and believe to-day as earnestly as 
we did yesterda}^, in " the freedom and the right " for 
which we fought, and for which so many of our com- 
rades fell, it behooves us heartily and earnestly to 



52 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

desire — not the success of this administration, whereby 
wrong should triumph and evil be established — not the 
perpetuation of wrongful authority in derogation of 
that freedom which poor Joe died to establish — but 
that the public weal may be subserved, and the years 
of ravished power be made a fruitful fallow wherein 
the right shall grow deep-rooted for to-morrow's har- 
vest. 

Why should this man go to Gettysburg ? Because 
there was told most forcibly the lesson he most needs 
to learn. Because there, upon its eighty-seventh birth- 
day, the nation reasserted the immortal principle which 
made its origin significant and has rendered its life 
glorious. Because fifteen thousand heroes who gave 
their lives for " freedom and the right," sealing with 
their blood the initial declaration of our national exist- 
ence, sleep peacefully upon the battle-scarred crest. 
Because here the contest waxed hottest between those 
who stood for '' freedom and the right " and a power 
based on the denial of a people's right as its corner- 
stone. Because here the arrogant claim of the white 
man to the dominion of the south, which is all that the 
President rightfully represents to-day, received its first 
and most terrible rebuke ! 

Why should he go to Gettysburg? Because that 
day of days which its green slopes will forever com- 
memorate should never be forgotten ! Because every 
patriot's love for " freedom and the right " should be 
strengthened and refined by recalling those July days 
when the wheat-clad hills lost their golden gleam and 
took instead the crimson hue of patriots' blood! 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 53 

Because here the most illustrious of all his predecessors 
gave utterance to the grandest burst of patriotic 
eloquence that ever fell from human lips — an effort of 
genius as immortal and resplendent as the devotion it 
commemorates. Because that peerless patriot of our 
history, that grandest hero of an heroic age, enjoined 
all those to whom his words might come, '^ from these 
honored dead to take increased devotion to the cause 
for which they died." Because these hills are yet red- 
olent with his presence, whose last solemn words to his 
countrj^men were of ''the mystic cords of memory 
stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave." 
Because Gettysburg marks the climax of J^ational 
peril and Confederate hope. Because it testifies forever 
of the most glorious anniversary that ever marked a 
nation's growth, of that eighty-seventh birthday which 
saw a shattered enemy beaten back from these ensan- 
guined slopes, the imperiled capital relieved, and the trust 
of him who spoke freedom to the slave and appealed to 
the God of battles in their behalf, marvelously justified. 
The day that saw our banner everywhere victorious — 
Lee forced back to the Potomac ; Bragg fleeing before 
our exulting legions ; while in the self -same hour came 
up from the sweltering Southland the tidings of Yicks- 
burg prostrate at the feet of Grant ! A great army 
made to pass under the yoke ! The stars and stripes 
waving over the Southern Gibraltar ! The Mississippi 
flowing "unvexed to the sea!" 

Truly where such lessons of liberty may be learned 
a President who uses the power of his high office to 
manifest his personal indorsement of, and sympathy 



54: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

with, those who, both in theory and practice, deny and 
subvert the rights of man, ought surely to go and con 
them carefully ! 

Why should Grover Cleveland visit Gettysburg? 
Because the hero-prophet and noblest martyr of lil)- 
erty, Abraham Lincoln, in words of undying eloquence, 
declared it to be holy ground, dedicated to liberty by 
the blood of the free, so that by its touch the patriot 
should f orevermore be consecrated anew to the struggle 
for "freedom and the right," and be irresistibly im- 
pelled by the noble example it commemorates " once 
more highly to resolve that a government of the people 
and hy the p>eopleJ^ as well as " for the people, shall not 
perish from the earth," 

Ah, Blower, I did hope that the President's first 
sight of a battle-field, even though clad, as it must have 
been, in the soft verdure of spring time, resting calmly 
in the sunshine of peace, yet rich with historic monu- 
ments, populous with scarred veterans, and teeming 
with patriotic memories, might have overcome even 
his indifference to the cause which triumphed there, 
broken down the barriers of his self-devotion and 
given the world one burst of patriotic aspiration from 
his lips ! 

Why did I weep ? It is well the ashes in thy 
scarred and blackened bowl have groAvn dull and cold 
Avhiie I have talked of these old days — the days when 
you first rested on my heart in the bivouac above the 
bayou — of the triumphs which we shared, but for 
which Joe died. Let me read a little of that quarter 
of a column, which is enough, and more than enough, 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 65 

to detail the visit of the nation's executive head to the 
most notable and glorious of the Nation's battle-fields : 

" The President made it a condition of his attendance 
that he should not he asked to speak.^^ 

Why did he appeal to silence \ Did a past, barren 
of patriotic ardor, paralyze his tongue, or did his pres- 
ent honors, based upon the same disregard of human 
right on which the Confederacy rested its appeal to 
arms, make him court the refuge of the wary and 
shield of the malfeasor ? 

" The President loas driven from ])oint to point ahoict 
■thefield^ and the movements of the three historic days 
fully explained to him. He made no remarks^ and 
asked no questions.'''' 

This Avas the President of the United States, 
Blower, upon the field which marked the turning of 
the tide that swept rebellion from the land. "He 
made n(f remarks." Can it be he had no thoughts, 
either, Blower ? Did they show him where Stannard's 
terribly smitten lines were drawn, and tell him how 
the raw Green Mountain boys, hardly a month from 
their fair Ncav England homes, met the scath of shot 
and shell as if war had been their boyhood's pastime ? 
If they did. Blower, do you suppose he remembered 
how " within a month — a little month," he had insulted 
every one of those Vermont ers, sleeping in the bloody 
graves upon the crest their pi]ed-up corpses held at 
last, by sending as the nation's representative to the 
Court of St. James the one man in all that green- 
hilled, liberty-loving state, who dared to mock at their 
heroism and sneer at the patient, sad-faced leader who 



56 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

staked all for " freedom and the right," and in humble 
self-forgetfulness ascribed all the glory to those who 
fought and to whose heroism he appealed for aid? 
Did he think what this '' dear dead dust on freedom's 
proudest shrine " would say could it but make the soft 
May wind its servitor ? Did he think what these dead 
whom Lincoln so devoutly honored, would say if they 
but knew that one of his successors had preferred the 
worst of their native state's few malcontents above 
the whole host of its heroes — their surviving com- 
rades ? 

Did they show him where Lawton's Georgians 
fought, and did he remember the words which this 
man — another of those he has just chosen to represent 
the nation abroad — had lately addressed to himself ? — 
" I have nothing to repent of, or apologize for, in con- 
nection with the Confederate cause." Ah, if he had 
repented, how gladly would the nation forgi\^ ! But 
what must be the President's reflections who among 
the dead of Gettysburg reflected that he had selected 
as the recipient of her highest honors, the plenary de- 
positary of her power and dignity, one who yet boasts 
that he neither repents having sought to destroy the 
Nation's life nor regrets the slaughter which resulted 
from this attempt to overthrow '^freedom and the 
right " and establish slavery and the wrong. It is not 
the fact that he was a rebel — not the fact that he was 
a valorous enemy — that makes him unfit for such pre- 
ferment now, but the fact that he still glories in what 
he did, and repents not of what he would have done. 

But the worst is yet to come, Blower. The report 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 57 

which was heralded to the land this morning declares 
that 

" The President seemed indifferent and somewhat 
hored ! " 

This w^as our President, Blower, upon the greatest 
battle-field of a four years' war 1 The president was 
^'hored^^ by the very sight of their graves but for 
whose heroism the nation which he now rules would 
have been swept from the face of the earth ! Is it any 
wonder that I wept as I read. 

May 13, 1885. 



OUE MAY DAYS. 



THE sweet May days have come again, Blower, 
and the fragrance of the apple-blossoms is on the 
morning air. The Veteran's heart is tender, for the 
season brings up memories laden with mingled joy and 
woe. His thoughts will go back to his own May — the 
balmiest season of young life. Again he walks in the 
brooding, vernal noontide beneath the dear old or- 
chard's overhanging boughs. The ancient trees that 
had stood in serried ranks like gray-clad soldiers, stub- 
bornly repulsing winter's fierce assaults for half a hun- 
dred years, had donned the garments of recurrent 
victory, and every scraggly head was hidden by an 
alabaster crown of gladness, just tinged with the faint 
blush which summer's ardor gives the opening flower. 
The soft, green leaves that creep between the crowding 
blossoms onl}^ serve to enhance their loveliness, and 
make the snowy windrows that stretch down the 
southward trending slope, seem more dense and bil- 
lowy when viewed from without. Under the trees the 
earth is carpeted with soft, spring verdure flecked with 
fallen petals. The sunshine comes but dimly through 
the screen of flowers and leaves. The bees hum 
drowsily about In the translucent waves of white and 
green. The birds twitter peacefully, or sing fervidly, 
flashing in and out among the tender filigree of the 
leafy arches. The upgrown hedgerows by the gray 

08 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 59 

old wall shut out the world. The fragrant canopy 
above excludes the sky save only where the azure 
shows through the silver-bordered rifts, or where the 
sun peeps through the wind-stirred leaves to note the 
s^ambols of the birds or watch the wanderino-s of the 
lovers underneath. Had ever love so fair a bower? 
Cushioned and carpeted with verdure ! Eadiant with 
light as warm and tender as that which fills the 
pearly shell seen through the emerald wave ! Over- 
hung with a waving canopy upborne by pillars gnarled 
and gray, whose regularity made the silence seem the 
work of grimly guarded necromants! Long, shaded 
avenues, bordered b}^ snug nooks, where the bowed- 
down branches almost met the grass, and offered that 
half-seclusion in which coy love forever seeks to hide 
the fond delights that need not to be hidden ! It was 
nature's nuptial bower bedecked for the union of fond 
hearts ! 

Was ever soldier's lot so sweet! We were fiesh 
from the battle-field, Blower, crowned with tlie gar- 
lands of victory, and bearing welcome trophies. The 
banners which our comrades had wrested from the foe 
had been intrusted to our hands for presentation to 
the authorities of our state. We had performed this 
duty. Bronzed and rugged, and not wholly unscathed 
by the hot breath of war, we had stood upon the his- 
toric portico, told in a few simple words the story of 
our comrades' heroism, and delivered into the hands of 
the chief magistrate of the commonwealth the memen- 
toes of their valor. We had listened to eloquent mes- 
sages of congratulation which we were charged to bear 



60 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

back to them, and our brown cheeks had burned all 
the ruddier because we knew the eye of love beheld 
our triumph. But when it was all over, when the huz- 
zas of the exultant multitude were hushed ; when the 
captured banners were hung upon the wall, where they 
now molder unheeded into dust ; when to pleasing 
duty a pleasant er respite succeeded ; when I fled from 
the crowded city and love welcomed me to this sweet 
fane upon the quiet hillside, then indeed the soldier's 
cup of joy was full. Under the scented canop}^ we 
wandered hour by hour. The sunlight and the shadow 
fought with trembling eagerness for mastery. Love's 
loitering footsteps bent the springing spires and pressed 
fresh fragrance from the fallen petals. The tresses 
which the sunlight kissed to golden brown were pow- 
dered with white flakes that the spring breezes loosened 
from their cups. From without came the sounds of 
peace and home — the cattle lowing in the fields, the 
lambs bleating on distant hillsides, the plowmen whist- 
ling in the furrow. The incense rising from your 
bowl, old friend, mingled with the aroma that freight- 
ed the airs of this Eden. The cushioned turf was the 
soldier's couch. Soft eyes showed the glint of tears as 
he told of " war's alarms." 

Ah, Blower, how bright the vision yet of the fair 
form robed in spotless white which leaned against a 
great gray trunk, her head crowned with a diadem of 
pink and white, her eyes full of a divine pity, while her 
hands scattered in trembling haste the ravished treas- 
ures of the overburdened boughs. Was it any wonder, 
Blower, that my lips forgot the tale of war and faltered 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 01 

forth the tale of love ? Is it any wonder that we can 
not forget ? How our hearts overleap the intervening 
years ! The mists are gathering in the valleys, but the 
heights are bathed in eternal sunlight. The years that 
lie between may be forgotten, but there are pictures 
in the past that will never grow dim. 

To-day, when the children, fresh from tlieir lirst 
flower-gathering holiday, burst into our dingy den, 
laden with white, softly blushing blooms, to bring the 
Veteran congratulations, his eyes were blinded to their 
pretty faces and his ears were deaf to their kindly prat- 
tle. He stood once more upon the sunlit hillside, with 
the bees and birds and flowers above, the springing 
clover underneath, and love and peace spread over all, 
while in the background war stood grim and terrible. 
God bless their sweet, bright faces and happy unwrung 
hearts ! They called me back into the present. Blower, 
with questions which I could not answer because of the 
dear, dead faces that rose upon my sight and sealed 
my lips with tender awe. I dreaded their curious ques- 
tionings. Their wondering eyes had noted already 
the dents in the crossed sabers, the heavy pistols, with 
their muzzles holster-worn upon one side, grim old com- 
panions of march and bivouac. They even spied your 
curious case and asked the story of that comrade who 
wrought so feebly many weary days to testify thereby 
his love. I feared lest they might see the worn and 
faded pouch that hangs beside it on the polished spikes 
that once adorned the an tiered monarch's head, and ask 
its story, too. I dreaded lest their eyes should spy a 
trace of the device once wrought upon its surface and 



62 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ask me what it was. It may be invisible to others, 
but to me it is still as clear and bright as when my eyes 
first rested on the soft chenille and read the words, 
'' Alice to John." 

It was the first offering of that sweet May-day love. 
How I laughed at the contrasted names, the one 
wrought in bright and slender filaments and the other 
done in colors dark and strong. Plow I sounded the 
syllables — of the one soft and sweet as the murmur 
of sinless souls by the river of life ; of the other 
abrupt and harsh, as if all the possible mishaps 
of life were not enough of ill for the rugged uncouth- 
ness to which it was so fittingly applied. I have always 
wondered. Blower, how "He who walked in Gallilee" 
could have chosen as His '' beloved " disciple one whose 
name • was John. So too I wonder — I have always 
wondered — why that gentle spirit — But we must 
not think of her. Blower. I drove the children away 
Avith harsh tones and scowling looks to-day when they 
pointed their chubby fingers at my treasure — my one 
memento of that matchless May. God knows I would 
not darken for one moment the sunshine of their young 
lives — but — but — I can not tell them of our May and 
the memories the apple-blossoms l)ring. 

It was oiiY May, Blower. The years that since have 
come have borne us ever farther and farther away from 
the vernal sweetness of that time. The boys who 
crowed and cackled in their mother's arms, while we 
lay under the scarred oaks waiting the onset, in those 
memorable days that followed hard upon the halcyon 
hours of love — those boys are men to-day. Their votes 



i 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 63 

already suffice to choose the nation's rulers, and theu' 
voices will soon sway the counsels of the nation. 

We were at the front then, Blower, not merely in 
a military sense, but in the front rank of the world- 
life of that da}^ It was a marvelous day, too, lighted 
with the glare of battle and filled with the fragrance 
of self-sacrifice and devotion. "Was it greater, was it 
better than the life of to-day ? Ah, who shall measure 
them? Who shall compare the generation cradled 
amid war's alarms with those who fought and died — 
or still more difficult and delicate a task, those who 
fought and lived ? 

We are not the only ones, Blower, who feel that the 
rush of years has borne us away from the time that 
was our own. The years have not been so many, but 
the days have been so big with destiny and the life 
which has come on, so different from that which went 
before, that the gulf between seems almost limitless. 
Men in the prime of life are balancing up their books 
as if age were at the threshold. Those who were not 
screened by the happy fact of insignificance, as we 
were, Blower, are now seeking, vainly enough, to 
amend the record of their acts or turn public attention 
away from what they did not do. Those who erred 
bewail the cruel fate that will not let the memory of 
evil die, and those who failed to uphold the right, 
sneer at the instinct which demands the evidence of 
patriotic impulse in that hour of peril, as the guarantee 
of patriotic purpose in this halcyon day of peace. 
They stoutly maintain that yesterday, with all its 
good and evil, must be forgotten. That " freedon and 



64 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

the right " are things of yesterday alone, and touch 
not any life to-day. Wrong-doing, many would have 
us believe, was absolved by ill-success; treason cured 
by defeat, and the armed champions of slavery trans- 
formed into knightly defenders of rights they still 
deny. 

It is a day of curious contrasts. Blower. The 
leaders of the revolt are anxious only to excuse their 
ill-success. One^ who laid down the sword which the 
nation had intrusted him for its defense, and spurned 
the honors which the country had bestowed upon him, 
whines now for sympathy because his treason was not 
richly enough rewarded, and while yet boasting the 
righteousness of the cause he sacrificed a soldier's 
honor to serve, is made the representative of a grateful 
nation's power and preferred over thousands who 
fouoht to save her from destruction. The world sees 
and wonders. " To err is human ; to forgive, divine," 
is so old an adage that mankind has learned to appre- 
ciate at length its beauty and its truth. But what 
shall be said of the new political creed which demands 
reward but spurns pardon ; which boasts of evil-doing, 
scorns the thought of repentance, yet imperiously 
clamors for oblivion, and insists that courage, ability 
and zeal in accomplishing evil yet unrepented of, shall 
be accounted equally meritorious with the heroic main- 
tenance of right ? 

The sunlight of otir May has grown very dim, 



*An article By Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, (C. S. A.) regretfully explain- 
ing- the cause of Confederate failure after the first battle of Bull Run, was 
queerly contemporaneous in its appearance with his appointment to his 
present lucrative position in connection with the Pacific Railways. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 65 

Blower. The gleam of bayonets which marked' the 
dividing line between right and wrong has been lost 
in the gloom that overhangs a million graves. In our 
anxiety to manifest our charity for those who sought 
to destro}^, we have insulted the dead who died for us 
by ignoring that for which they fought. We have 
counted treason and patriotism synonymous in signifi- 
cance and equal in merit. Not many months ago, one 
stood under the flag unfurled above the Senate cham- 
ber, and in words of boastful truculence declared that in 
his hearing no man should attach the name of " traitor " 
to the executive head of the Confederacy without sw4ft 
rebuke. Instead of being a rebel, he declared that the 
Confederate ex-President was a patriot whom history 
would justify, and whom all the world would honor. 
He knew, and the world knows, that the man he so 
exultantly eulogized had used his position and influ- 
ence as a Senator of the United States, not only to 
encouratre and organize armed resistance and defiance 
to national power, but Jit the last minute had with- 
draAvn from her councils to assume the leadership of a 
revolt, not aiming merely at a divided sovereignty; but 
declaring itself the irreconcilable opponent of ''the 
fundamentally wrong assumption of equality " on which 
our government is founded, and announcing as its cor- 
ner-stone ''the great truth that the negro is not equal 
to the white man, and that subordination to the supe- 
rior race is his natural and normal condition." For 
this act and the blood spilled in the conflict, which he 
spared no pains to promote, he has never expressed 
one syllable of regret nor uttered one word of sorrow, 
5 



Q6 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

He has boasted rather of the blood . which stains his 
hands, declaring it to have been shed in a holy cause. 
This is the man whom a Senator of the United States 
defied the world to stigmatize as a traitor ! This the 
definition which a Senator of the United States applies 
to patriotism ! 

But this is not all. The Senator-^ himself was the 
willing representative of open and confessed wrong. 
He stood within the Senate chamber, at that very mo- 
ment, an acknowledged exponent of the principle on 
which the Confederacy stood yesterday — the subordi- 
nation of the black race to the white — the utter disre- 
gard of human rights as an attribute of dusky -hued 
humanity. Only by flagrant and outrageous violation 
of national law and open defiance of the fundamental 
princij^le on which the government is founded could 
he have worn the robe of the Senator. Nay, worse 
even than that, his credentials as such might fitly have 
been written in the blood of free citizens of the Re- 
public, slain while battling bravely for the rights of 
the weak and poor — rights which the Nation in the 
o'lorious exaltation of on?' May had bestowed with un- 
bounded self-laudation and which the trustful recipients 
foolishly su]:)posed the shadow of the flag would for- 
ever protect. He stood in the Senate for usurpation, 
violence, blood and fraud — for the right of one man to 



*non L, Q. C. Lamar, late a Colonel in the Confederate array ; Senator of 
the United States, by the grace of "Ritle Clubs" and the " Mississippi Plan," 
until March fourth, 1885, and since that time Secretary of the Interior, by 
virtue of appointment of G rover Cleveland, President. By a Confederate 
ColonePs strange coincidence this sig'natui-e has become essential to the 
validity of every pension granted for service In the Union army. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 67 

control another — for slavery in defiance of law — even 
as the Confederacy had stood upon the field of battle 
for slavery sanctioned by statutory form. 

The nation saw and knew all this, but dared not 
protest lest it should be accused of having compassion 
for the weak rather than charity for the strong. But 
the tragedy was not complete until the nation, long 
deaf to the holiest pledges which a free people can give 
in vindication of their freedom, had bestowed on 
usurpation and outrage the seal of its approval. That 
time has come. The chosen representative of the life 
and thought of to-day — the executive head of the na- 
tion — made such by the fraudulent repression of rights 
bestowed in fulfillment of vows to the Most Higli and 
sealed by the blood of thousands, freely shed m the 
golden moments of oior May — for that freedom which 
is the essence of all right, this man. Blower, in the exer- 
cise of this usurped power, constituted this very Senator 
who 3^et boasted of treason, and stood as the confessed 
exponent of violated right, one of the chief coadjutors of 
his power, an exponent of his will and representative 
of his authority ! Is it any wonder. Blower, that one 
of the first acts of such an one, throusrh whose advance- 
ment usurpation, violence, and fraud had been not 
merely condoned but distinctly and unmistakably ap- 
proved, should be to put the flag of the nation at half- 
mast upon the public building under his control, in 
honor of one who had laid down the duties of his hig-h 
office in order to become the inciter of unlawful vio- 
lence in an enemy's country — the self-confessed em- 
ployer and re warder of assassins and incendiaries — a 



68 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

man whose only objection to a proposal for the destruc- 
tion of a great city by the stealthy introduction of 
Greek fire by incendiaries animated by greed and love' 
for plunder Avas that it was not a sufficiently certain 
agent of wholesale destruction ! 

Truly, Blower, to-day is far enough from our victo- 
rious May ! It is well to leave the captured flags to 
rot, or, better still, to doom them to swifter destruc-- 
tion, lest they soon become reproachful badges of our 
shame ! It is said, Blower, that this man, the head of 
the Department of the Interior, is a cultured, amiable 
Christian gentleman. Pie is said to be so fond of clas- 
sical lore that he aspires to give a new and better Eng- 
lish dress to those Theban odes in Avliich the wisdom 
and patriotism of the ancients were enshrined. Be- 
cause of these gentle qualities, we are told that it is 
little less than an outrage to impute to him anything but 
the most delicate and chivalrous sense of patriotic duty. 
All this may be true. Blower. He may read Pindar 
as glibly as a school-boy tells his task, and say his 
prayers as regularly as El Mahdi, yet, I must still aver, 
Blower, that in our May no man would have been 
deemed worthy of national approval who had been a 
party to the debasement of the freeman's right, or who 
made himself the voluntary champion of unrepentant 
assailants of the nation's life ; neither would the viola- 
tor of law and one who denied the right of a whole 
people to a share in self-government have been deemed 
a worthy instrument to administer the laws or uphold 
t^e dignity of a republic based on equal rights to all 
men. Our May is very far away, Blower. To-day 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 69 

has forgotten its lessons, but to-morrow will learn its 
truths anew. 
May 19, 1886. 



"MEMOEIAL^^ DAY. 



THIS is the new name, Blower, for the " festival of 
flowers" we have been won't to celebrate upon 
this 30tli of May. At first we called it *' Decoration 
Day." By that name it is designated in the statutes 
of those states which have made it a legal holiday, or 
otherwise given its observance legal recognition. For 
a decade and a half the heart of the nation, still warm 
with that patriotic ardor which inspired the soldiers of 
the Republic, paid homage to their valor and celebra- 
ted the triumph of the cause for which they fought, by 
this annual festival of flowers, and because of its tri- 
umphant and exultant character dominated it Decora- 
tion Day. The graves of departed veterans were 
heaped Avith the garlands of victory, symbolical both 
of grateful remembrance and patriotic rejoicing. It 
was a day of jubilee, on which the hero-dead were re- 
membered with tenderness and their achievements with 
exultation. Such it is still for us. Blower, and forever 
shall be. We loved our comrades. We can never for- 
get their virtues, and would not deserve to be remem- 
bered in our extremest hour if we should ever cease to 
honor their devotion. 

But we can not wear the garb of woe, nor march 
behind a draped and trailing banner on this day. The 
comrades whom we loved may not be honored in sack- 
cloth. The shrieking pipes that wail the dead do not 

70 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 71 

fitly express a ransomed nation's loving remembrance 
of their deeds. The soldier is most honored by the 
story of his exploits, and the patriot best remembered 
by emulation of his self-sacrifice. To dwell upon the 
hero's sufferings and ignore the motive which inspired 
his acts is to degrade him to the level of the merce- 
nary. Fame dwells in purpose as well as in achievement. 
Fortitude is sanctified only by its aim. Privation is 
merely pitiful, unless endured for a noble end. Mourn- 
ing ill-befits the memory of one who suffered bravely 
in a noble cause, which through his fortitude and valor 
has been crowned with victory. Poor Joe would count 
his love but ill-requited, Blower, should we go and 
mourn above his grave for the life cut off in the prom- 
ise of its springtide strength and beauty. His grieved 
spirit would overwhelm us with keen reproaches, should 
he behold us sorrowing still for the life he gladly 
offered up for '' freedom and the right." Ah, Blower, 
we know what he would say : 

"Has the cause for which I died become so des- 
picable," he would be sure to ask, " that my country 
recalls its triumph with sadness, and remembers the 
devotion of her sons with sorrow? Am I accounted 
so unfortunate in having died for liberty that the 
banner of the free is draped, and the drum's exultant 
throbbings muffled on the one day when the nation 
calls my sacrifice to mind? Then, indeed, was my 
devotion folly and my suffering vain ! " 

For such comrades, Blower, I dare not weep. Tears 
may well fall upon the patriot's bier, but he who 
mourns above his verdant grave when the cause for 



72 THE VETERAN AND HIS FIFE. 

which he fell has proved triumphant, offers insult to 
his memory. Yet our comrades of the ever-lessening 
Grand Army of survivors of that great struggle, in 
General Encampment assembled, have decided that the 
instinct of patriotism which by common consent hal- 
lowed that day when we first laid the wreaths of vic- 
tory on the graves of our patriot dead, as " Decora- 
tion Day, and provided for its future observance as a 
day of jubilant remembrance of victory and deliver- 
ance, was for once at fault. So they have solemnly de- 
creed that henceforth it shall not be called " Decora- 
tion Day," nor kept as a festival of rejoicing, but 
shall be denominated '' Memorial Day," and be ob- 
served as a day of mourning for our patriot dead. 

Oh ! shameful mockery of a noble impulse ! As 
well celebrate the Savior's birth in sackcloth ; pipe a 
funeral march before a marriage train; or require sur- 
viving veterans to wear convict stripes and march in 
lockstep, as to prescribe mourning emblems for this 
day. What have we to do with sorrow ? Yictors ex- 
ult ! They who celebrate deliv^erance from evil, re- 
joice ! Do we mourn our hero-dead ? Then indeed are 
we unworthy of the devotion they displayed. 

Two days in all the busy year our nation claims to 
celebrate in commemoration of the most notable events 
in its history. One also it has consecrated to the mem- 
ory of its first great patriot — not choosing to mourn 
forever for his death — " seeking his noble father in the 
dust " — but electing rather to exult in the good fortune 
that gave to us the name of Washington as an eternal 
heritage of fame. The first of these American hpli- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS FIFE. 73 

days marks the anniversary of our first assertion of 
national autonomy, made famous and immortal by the 
formulation of individual right on which it was predi- 
cated. The valor of our fathers made good the boast- 
ful declaration. We celebrate the fact with gay mu- 
sic, flaunting banners, and universal acclaim. We re- 
count their heroism, not with tears, but with rejoicing. 
We do not mourn for those who fell, but exult in the 
sacrifice that purchased victory. To have perished in 
that struggle is the proudest inheritance a man of that 
day could leave to his children. How well we re- 
member the story. Blower, which has come down from 
sire to son, of one who, ordered to " limber away," 
refused to leave the rocky path by which his guns were 
posted while he could hold the enemy in check. The 
commander-in-chief wrote himself to the young wife, 
whose tears fell upon the face of her first-born as she 
read his words: "-Your husband's valor saved the 
army from destruction." Save this memory the young 
artilleryman left nothing for his child beyond a nation's 
flattering promises, which were forgotten in the very 
hour of utterance. But that faded scrap of paper is 
a precious legacy to hundreds who bear his name, and 
exult in the priceless boon of heroic blood. The story 
of toil and suffering is but the dark background against 
which valor and victory shine out the brighter. 

Our other national feast was designed to celebrate 
the preservation of the nationality our fathers estab- 
lished, and the extension and universal application of 
that principle for which they gladly staked " life, for- 
tune, and their sacred honor." As an Qvent of history, 



74: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

it as far outshines the other as the nation of to-day ex- 
cels the meager colonies of a hundred years ao^o in 
grandeur and prosperity. Our fathers formulated a 
new theory of government, of which they themselves 
took advantage, and to which they appealed in justifica- 
tion of the act of rebellion. Our comrades, accepting 
this doctrine and inspired by its spirit, overthrew armed 
revolt against it, gave liberty and equality of right, to 
millions of a race our fathers had despised too heartily 
to heed their prayer — did what they had left undone, 
and transformed their boastful declaration into accom- 
plished fact. Shall we mourn for these men, who were 
our comrades, while we exult in the devotion of our 
fathers' fathers ? 

No, Blower; never shall it be said that we wore the 
garb of mourning on that day when the achievements 
of our comrades are commemorated. The moments 
dedicated to their memory shall be full of gladness. 
"When we wore the blue in the day of battle, we obeyed 
orders as a good soldier. In that Grand Army which 
still survives we are glad always to obey any reason- 
able requirement, and manifest due subordination to 
constituted authority. But there is a "higher law" 
than the edict of a General Encampment, a more 
potent authority than a Grand Commander's order. 
The dead whom we profess to honor have authority 
above all who live, to forbid dishonor to their memory. 
Our anniversary, Blower, shall be one of gladness 
and exultation. We will remember the old days ; sing 
the old songs ; fly our battle-scarred banner from the 
peak, and strew the flowers that speak of victory and 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. Y5 

rejoicing on the graves of those whose memory we 
revere. It shall still be "Decoration Day" in our 
hearts; and gratitude for a nation preserved and dedi- 
cated anew to '' Freedom and the Eight " shall be the 
theme of our exultant meditations. 

Why was our glorious anniversary abolished? 
Why were the waving flags bound with dolorous 
drapery, and the veterans on this one day of their 
public appearance greeted with wailing dirges and 
escorted with funereal ceremonies to their comrades' 
verdant graves ? Has the J^ation ceased to rejoice in 
its deliverance? Has the birthright of liberty become 
a thing of shame ? Do we mourn because our fathers' 
boastful declaration has been made a fact and Ava^ought 
into the warp of our national life ? 

Ah, Blower it is a curious tale. They who meet on 
the anniversary of " Stonewall " Jackson's death, to do 
honor to the dead heroes of a " lost cause," most appro- 
priately christened that sorrowful occasion " Memorial 
Day." The sentiment of joy could constitute no ele- 
ment of its observance. Their dead had died in vain. 
The cause for which they fought Avas lost, and the ban- 
ner which had floated above tlieir ranks was swept into 
oblivion. Tlieir hope was inurned Avith their heroes. 
The nationality tliey had sought to establish had van- 
ished like a dream. The luster of their heroes's fame 
must be dimmed forever by the memory of hopeless 
disaster and incurable AA^rong. 

It Avas not Lee alone Avho surrendered at Appomat- 
tox. When the Confederacy yielded up its life, they 
who had upborne its banner in those terrible years. 



76 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

were compelled also formally to renounce the principle 
on which it was based. What its eloquent Yice-Presi- 
dent had denominated "the great truth" on which it 
rested "as a corner-stone, the subordination of the 
black race to the white" — the right to enslave, for 
which so many had loyally and bravely died — those 
who remained were compelled by overmastering odds 
to yield. They who fought for the freedom of all, and 
equality of rights for all, Avere victorious ; while they 
Avho had made appeal to God by the device upon their 
battle flag to maintain and defend the sanctity and 
justness of slavery, suffered defeat. Through all the 
years that are to come these men must bear the stigma, 
not merely of defeat, but of a cause inherently wrong. 
Their heroism and the sincerity of their conviction may, 
in part, redeem their fame, but at the best it must ever be 
held to have been wasted heroism — mistaken sincerity. 
The world may admire and pity, but it can never 
applaud. Their courage and fortitude are a part of the 
world's inheritance: but those who love "freedom and 
the right," in all the ages, must ever be grateful for the 
final overthrow of the cause their valor and their 
genius so long upheld. 

The highest fame which it is possible for the 
Confederate hero to attain must ever be tainted with 
excuse and apology. Of their dead it must ever be 
said, as in extenuation of a fault, "They thought 
they were right." Beyond that the most daring 
eulogium can not go. They were brave and earnest, 
but misguided men. Their achievements were deeds 
of marvelous valor, but the hope of liberty depended 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 77 

on their discomfiture. Sad beyond the power of words 
to depict, is the story of their devotion and their over- 
throw. Sadder still, the fact that in history they will 
only be remembered as the last of that brave array of 
champions who, in the jarring cycles of the past, have 
fought and died in defense of slavery — rendering up 
their lives for the fancied right of oppressing their fel- 
lows. Well is the day Avhich is consecrated to their 
memory termed a "Memorial Day" — a day full of 
mournful memories and bhghted hopes. For those who 
mourn these dead heroes and this ill-fated cause, the 
present brings only the bitterness of regret, and the 
future offers no consoling hope of an ultimate reha- 
bilitation of their fame. To them, time is but a via 
dolorosa^ whose ever-deepening gloom must rest more 
densely on the fame of those they loved, -as their excuse 
grows year by year less plausible, and the cause for 
which they fought grows more and more odious to 
free-born millions, to whose thought slavery will be 
only a horrid nightmare of an uncomprehended past. 

Why was our glorious holiday, commemorative of 
victory rather than defeat, of glad deliverance rather 
than of hopeless overthrow, 'of triumphant battle for 
the right rather than of desperate struggle for the 
wrong, — why was that anniversary of gladness sought 
to be assimilated in name and manner of observance to 
this sorrowful memento of humiliation and disaster 1 

Ah, Blower, it is a sad story of human weakness. 
Strange as it may seem, there were those, even among 
our comrades, who, for a little cheap laudation, in silly 
deference to a sickly sentimentality, were willing to 



78 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

abase themselves and strip their dead comrades of the 
white cerements in which they peacefully and gloriously 
sleep. These men thought that the difference between 
right and wrong, between devotion to liberty and the 
defense of slavery, between equality of right for all 
men and the right of the strong to oppress the weak — • 
might be blotted out, and the Xation led to honor 
alike the champion of the right and the upholder of the 
w^rong. So they sought first to deprive the day of any 
significance to the living. Only the manhood and 
valor of the dead were to be commemorated. The 
dead were to be mourned ; the cause for which they 
died, forgotten. There was no other way by which 
the desired object could be accomplished, and the future 
taught to honor the soldier for his deeds, regardless of 
his motive. 

Of course, they to whom the years of conflict brought 
only sorrow and humiliation could not make their anni- 
versary a jubilation. They had no reason to rejoice. 
Even those who felt they had been in the wrong could 
not look back upon those years of havoc with feelings 
of genuine gladness. If either festival was to suffer 
change, it must be ours. So anxious were our brethren 
to blot out all memory of difference, to put " the blue " 
and ''the gray" upon the same level of commendation 
and reverence in the eyes of posterity, that they deter- 
mined that if our sometime foemen could not come up 
to our plane of exultation we should go dowm to their 
level of humiliation. It was a silly notion. As if the 
facts of history could be changed by resolution ! Right 
be made wrong, or jo}^ turned to sorrow, at the w411 of 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 79 

a few sentimental enthusiasts! These men had, per- 
haps, the right to renounce for themselves, the merit of 
patriotic purpose, but they had no right to rob the 
dead of that which alone makes their beds upon the 
battle-field forever glorious. They would count poor 
Joe's devotion to ''freedom and the right" as noth- 
ing, Blower ; and call upon the country to remember 
and reverence, not the patriot — but the soldier! They 
would have us admit that the only memorable thing 
about our dear, dead heroes was the fact that they 
endured privation without murmuring, and faced death 
without flinching. They would ignore what made 
him worthy of remembrance, in order that they might 
do equal honor to his enemy. They would (h'ag 
the hero down from his high pinnacle of moral purpose, 
and put him on the plane of the hired bravo who fights 
because slaughter is his trade, and to whom tlie cause 
remains indifferent. AYhat honor is it to say of a 
man that he was brave ? The cur who lies upon the 
mat at our feet merits the same commendation. Joe's 
devotion was no such brutal instinct. His was the 
glory of self sacrifice — the championship of right. His 
memory can only be rightly lionored when tlie cause 
for which he fell is exalted and the halo of victory cast 
upon his tomb. 

And they would do this. Blower — they would dese- 
crate our festival of glory by clothing it in the garb of 
woe, and degrade the Nation's rejoicing in her deliver- 
ance from evil, into puerile pity for the dead, who were 
glorified in dying — they would do all this in the name 
of charity ! They would invoke that sweet sentiment 



80 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 



\ 



which was the inspiration of Joe's hfe — that love for 
tiie rights of others and chivah'ous devotion to the 
cause of the weak and the oppressed, for which he hved 
and died — as an excuse for stripping him of his one 
claim to immortality ! 

God forgive us, Blower, if, with Joe's name on our 
lips and Joe's memory in our hearts, we should fail in 
devotion to the thought for which his blood was shed ! 
We have no malice toward our foes of yesterday. The 
blood that stains the soil beneath our feet is too holy 
to permit our hearts to cherish aught of anger, revenge, 
or any form of uncharitable sentiment. . We admire 
the courage, honor the fortitude, and respect the sin- 
cerity, of those who stood over against us in the day of 
conflict as much as even those who mourn in the shadow 
of disappointment and defeat. We are glad that such 
foemen were our brothers, and count our posterity 
happy in their joint inheritance of fame. But while 
we honor their valor and pity their misfortune we 
regret also — alas, we must ever remember and ever 
regret — their error ! We can not mourn for tlieir mis- 
fortune or cease to rejoice in our victory. Even those 
among them to whom the consciousness of error came 
with the knowledge of defeat, can not but be grateful 
for the disaster that brought humihation. 

God pity us. Blower, but love and charity, however 
sweet and fervent, cannot so gild the wrong as to make 
it pass current among men as the right. There is not in 
the lapse of years any merciful medicament that will 
heal the fame of him who fought, however valorously 
and sincerelv, for slaverv, and raise it to the level of 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 81 

the humblest of those who fell in the cause of freedom. 
This is the gulf that lies between Joe's fame and that 
of the kindliest, noblest, truest of those with whom he 
fought, and in resisting whose impetuous valor, he 
died. Tears cannot obliterate it. Charity cannot 
hide it. As long as men love freedom, they must ap- 
plaud the act of the one and deplore the attempt of the 
other. 

For the one army of valorous dead let us hold 
" memorial ! " services, solemn and sad, 3'^et tender and 
sweet. Let us mourn their wasted manhood, and do 
honor to their misguided valor. But for the others — 
those who shed their blood for that charity which counts 
the rights and liberties even of the weakest and humblest 
of earth above life itself — let not only us and our com- 
rades, but the nation redeemed from peril and shame, 
and all the liberty-lovers of earth, forever hold them 
in joyful remembrance ! When we shall cease to heap 
their graves with flowers, let the garlands of fame grow 
brighter as the blessings which their valor bought 
grow richer with the coming years, making all future 
time their endless " Decoration Day ! " 

May 30, 1885. 



"ALAS! SWEET CHARITY." 



'TTT'E are in the country, Blower, and have wan- 
V V clered out into the old orchard where the sweet- 
est memories of the past are embalmed in fragrance 
and beauty, for an hour of self-communion. The trees 
have grown older since our sweetest May-day beneath 
their branches. The waving grace of the brown, lithe 
limbs is gone. The great gnarled heads have grown 
gray and stiff. The trunks are coarse and mossy, es- 
pecially on the windward sides. Some are broken and 
decayed. The woodpeckers have made their nests in 
the shattered branches. There are great gaps in some 
of the rows where the sunlight falls unhindered on the 
sod. The fallen petals yet cover the ground like mimic 
snow, but the beauty and the glory of the old orchard 
are of yesterday, though its gnarled and scraggly limbs 
yet bear sweet and wholesome fruit for the nourish- 
ment of to-day. 

Let us rest in the half shadow that lies about the 
trunk of this old tree, whose broken boughs teach a 
lesson of good works, while the fresh young shoots that 
spring up from the rent limbs speak of courage in the face 
of misfortune ; let us rest here in the very spot where 
Ave first heard young love's sweet whispered w^ords, and 
bring our thoughts to rigorous self-judgment. In the 
light of the holiest memories of the past, let us ask 
whether the heart that beats beneath the folded sleeve 

82 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 83 

is harsh ^nd unjust in its judgments of to-day. For 
such is the charge that is made against us, Blower. It 
is said that the visions Avhich I see in the perfumed 
clouds that rise above thy polished bo\Yl, unlike them, 
are not tinged with the azure hue of charity, or bor- 
dered with a fleecy film that hides the outlines of all 
things lying beyond their narrow circlet. On the con- 
trary. Blower, it is claimed that for me, hateful memo- 
ries gleam fierce and hot under the cold ashes of a 
broken life, like the embers of thy heated bowl, and 
are wakened to new life by angry inspiration. One 
who may have met us manfully in the day of battle, 
perhaps the very one to whom this empty sleeve is due, 
asks with grieved sincerity, "is it not time that charity 
hid the evils of the past, and 23ermitted only what was 
good therein to be remembered 'i " 

Are w^e uncharitable, Blower? Would we re- 
member or induce another to remember what otig/it 
to be forgotton? Is there in the heart that lies 
beneath the folded sleeve one thought of rancor? 
Would w^e ignore one element of yesterday that 
ought to be remembered? Have we ever uttered 
words of bitterness, or even of reproach, for those who 
fought for the wrong? Have we ever failed to ac- 
knowledge in them a valor equal, man for man, to 
that of the comrades whom we love ? He who writes 
reproachfully, demanding charity, says of himself 
that he w^as "brought up under the withering, bhght- 
ing curse of slavery," and because of this he says of 
the Confederate cause : " I believed the7i that w^e were 
right as firmly as I now believe that we were wrong." 



84 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

Were we ever lacking in charity to one " brought 
up under the withering curse of slavery," Blower? 
Have we ever failed in due appreciation of those who 
believed we were wrong as sincerely as Joe believed 
that we were right, or in expressed commendation and 
approval of one who makes himself doubly a hero by 
declaring " that for which I fought, believing it right, 
I now abhor, beheving it wrong? " 

If so, we have done grievous wrong and hasten now 
to make confession of our fault. We can hardly. say 
we have forgiven those who fought against us, because, 
even in the heat and fervor of the conflict, while we 
stood in the liery crater of battle or witnessed the pit- 
iful woes of the prison pen, we never once forgot how 
the " blighting, withering curse of slavery" had distorted 
noble lives ; and while we pitied greatly, Ave felt no ran- 
cor. So, we are very sure, felt the great body of our 
comrades. Before we first entered into battle our souls 
had been shrived clean of hate. The mustering of the 
freemen of the ISTorth was, indeed, a crusade for liberty. 
A deep and fervid ecstacy underlay the whole movement 
and gave it the character of a religious warfare as intense 
and earnest as any which the past has witnessed ; but 
differing from all other conflicts based upon divergence 
of belief, in this one element — its force was directed 
solely against the idea which it opposed, and not at all 
against the individuals by whom the idea was upheld. 

For the first time in the world's history, a genuine 
religious zeal inspired embattled hosts arrayed in sup- 
port of a specific dogma, almost without trace of en- 
mity or aversion toward its defenders. The belief of 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 85 

the North in the principles of human liberty and equal- 
ity of right, was so fervent and sincere that it could not 
conceive how one could honestly deny their truth, 
unless brain and conscience had indeed been perverted 
through "the blighting, withering curse of slavery." 
Because we regarded the life and thought of the South 
as the product and result of this curse, we counted 
those honest and sincere who mustered in its defense 
under the '■ stars and bars ; " and because we believed 
in their sincerity we forgot their error, looking upon 
them with pity only, and not with hate. In saying 
this, Blower, I believe that I speak for all those who, 
like poor Joe, fought for " freedom and the right." 
The clash of arms, it is 1:rue, may have developed 
sparks of fire. War is savagery, and pity flies af- 
frighted from the battlefield. The hatred and the 
fear of slavery's baneful influence steeled our hearts 
for conquest. All that was needful for its overthrow 
and annihilation we were willing to suffer and to do, 
but we had no wish to punish. Devotedly as we loved 
the riglit — or what we deemed the right — bitterly as we 
hated the wrong — or what we deemed the wrong — we 
wished only to establish, the one and not to punish or 
despoil the upholders of the other. So we overthrew 
and disarmed our foe, taking nothing from him that 
was his, and bade him go in peace upon his promise of 
good behavior only. This was not the act, of hate, nor 
did it show a lack of charity. Blower. We believed 
our enemies to be earnest and sincere in their belief, 
but counted that belief dangerous to liberty. All we 
sought to do, therefore, was to render them powerless 



86 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

for harm, and render their belief innocuous for the 
future. 

We gave the slave his liberty, it is true, or rather 
permitted him to resume what was his own by natural 
and inalienable right; and gave to him the guaranty of a 
constitutional provision that he should not be deprived 
tliereof nor molested in the enjo3anent of the same. 
We did not do this to injure the master, nor to take from 
him what was his ; but because " the right " for w^liich 
we fought forbade us to recognize property in man. 
It was the master's mishap that loss accrued to him 
thereby — the common misfortune that waits upon er- 
roneous judgment. But for the wrongs of slavery we 
exacted no penalty. Even for the slave's sake, we 
took nothing from the master. Naked as he came into 
the world, he entered also into the estate of freedom. 
The tools with which he wrought, the very clothes 
Avhicli hid his nakedness, the master was at liberty to 
withhold from him. We did not eveu take out of the 
master's granary corn for a single day's support of the 
slave wdiose labor he had enjoyed for years without 
recompense. We gave the slave his freedom, and al- 
lowed the master to hold, unlessened by a single grain, 
the product of his labor. We sought to cure the ill of 
slavery; but did not seek to punish, even by the light- 
est touch of power, the wrong of past enslavement or 
compel atonement to be made for unrequited toiL This 
was not the part of hate, Blow^er, nor does it argue any 
lack of charity. 

Perhaps it might have been more wisely done 
in some of its details ; but never before in all the 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 87 

world's history was the conqueror's will so lightly 
tinged with harshness, or administered with such ten- 
der care, not merely for the rights, but even for the 
foibles and fancies of the subjugated. I^ay, we have 
been so charitable that we have winked at crimes 
which have put barbarism to the blush; and have al- 
most forborne to blame, when the nation's pledges to 
the liberated bondman have been rendered null by ran- 
corous and organized opposition to the nation's will. 
We have so trusted in the sincerity of our foemen and 
believed in the potency of right to heal even "the blight- 
ing curse of slavery," that we have Avaited patiently 
and hopefully for words and works that should testify 
recognition and acceptance, not merely of the physical 
facts attending the overthrow of the Confederacy, but 
also of the principle which underlay the suppression 
of rebellion — the equal right of all men to the privil- 
ege of self-government, on which the right to liberty in 
its last analysis must ever rest. We have waited twen- 
ty years for evidence of that true citizenship which is 
jealous of the rights of every other citizen, only to see 
the law of the land openly defied and seven millions of 
citizens, to whom the nation had pledged its protection 
in the exercise of a freeman's right, thrust without the 
pale of sovereignty by force or fraud, and given only so 
much of privilege as the master- race may see fit to al- 
low. This is openly and boldly proclaimed, and the 
rule of the majority, on which our liberties depend, 
is boldly flouted by those who, in the same breath, plead 
for charity and oblivion for the evil of the past. 

Even then we have granted this prayer. Blower. 



88 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

Such has been our tender consideration for our some- 
time enemies, that we have turned a deaf ear to 
the cries of our feeble aUies, have stood quietly by 
while their rights were ravished from them, and per- 
mitted the most valuable element of the liberty 
we had won for them and guaranteed to them to be 
wrested from their grasp, without interference; nay, 
almost without protest. We have made ourselves false 
to the nation's plighted honor in order to manifest our 
charity. Such a course. Blower, is but a poor founda- 
tion for the piteous whine for charity which every wind 
that comes up from the South brings to ears that begin 
to grow weary of its iteration. 

Much has been said. Blower, and is said to-day, of the 
injustice of having excluded a portion of the Southern 
people for a short period from the privilege of partici- 
pating in the control and direction of the government. 
Less than one-fifth of the white population was thus 
excluded by operation of law, and the memory of it, 
even after the lapse of a decade and a half yet fills the 
Southern heart with rage, and produces red-eyed par- 
oxysms of threatening diatribe, of the same charac- 
ter, and of like quality, with those wonderful efforts in 
which slavery shrieked defiance to liberty and be- 
wailed the lack of charity that questioned her right to 
oppress. Yet this abnormal anger at the debarjnent 
of a feio of their race, for a brief period, from the 
right of suffrage, has not tended in the least degree, to 
make them careful of the rights of others, but seems 
instead to have stimulated in them an insane rage to 
subvert the freedman's blood-bought and law-defined 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 89 

privilege. But it is time, Blower, that the gloss of 
sentnnentality was stripped from this threadbare plea 
of wrong. It is not true that the J^ation took from any 
man any right which he possessed ! 

Only the other da}^ a petition was sent to the 
President of the United States asking the pardon 
of Jefferson Davis. Though framed in blissful igno- 
rance of statutory enactments, it still proceeded on a 
logical hypothesis in asserting that the late presi- 
dent of the Confederacy was, in law and morals, 
guilty of no graver an offense than other thousands, 
all of whom had been forgiven and restored to all 
the rights the citizen can have. Every citizen of the 
United States who voluntarily aided the rebellion, 
by that act, in equity as well as by law, lost all the 
rights appertaining to such citizenship. It is a silly and 
arrogant pretense that the rebel soldier, with the oath 
of allegiance to the Confederacy yet warm upon his 
lips, and the flag of rebellion flying above his head as 
he charged the Union lines with determined purpose to 
destroy, had somewhere hidden about his person — per- 
haps wrapped about the " forty rounds " of death- 
dealing cartridges he carried into action — the safeguard 
and guaranty of American citizenship. Allegiance 
has no such indestructible quality. 

The man who calls upon God to witness his re- 
nunciation of the old and his adoption of a new alle- 
giance can never afterwards assert any plea of right 
or privilege under the former. What comes to him 
thereafter of consideration or privilege from the 
government he has renounced must be of grace and 



90 THE VETERA.N AND HIS PIPE. 

not of right. All that the government ever did 
was to leave a small percentage of its armed and 
organized enemies just where they had placed them- 
selves. The}^ had called God to witness that they 
were no longer citizens of the United States, and had 
caused official record of this to be entered in the pub- 
lic archives. Because four-fifths were pardoned out- 
right, and the others left for a while upon probation, 
the whole have raised the curious outcry of injustice 
and oppression. 

Even this last petitioner for the last unpardoned rebel 
alleges, with apparent unconsciousness of its absurdity, 
that others have been pardoned while he for whom he 
asks rehabilitation has not, and that this withholding of 
pardon for acts of the most flagrant and ensanguined 
wrong, constitutes an injustice which is likely to bring 
down the gray hairs of the aged patriot with sorrow to 
the grave. What a refutation is this. Blower, of the oft- 
repeated charge of a lack of charity and forbearance on 
the part of the natic»n. No hangman was required when 
our rebellion ended. No commissioners of confiscated 
estates held crowded courts thereafter, as at the close 
of our revolutionary war ; but at the end of twent}^ 
years the head of one of the greatest rebellions the 
world has ever known, the commander-in-chief of an 
,^rmy which it cost half a million lives to overthrow — 
this man, by the mouth of ^ prochaine ami alleges as 
his chiefest grievance, that our abounding morcy has 
left him no companion in misfortune — that he is the 
only man whose voluntary oath renouncing his alle- 
giance has been allowed to stand unexpunged ! 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. ^ ,91 

But he who Avrites the words which we have read 
with solemn gladness, " I believed that we were right 
then as thoroughly as I now believe that we were 
wrong," by their very utterance has put himself be- 
yond the pale of charity. Charity implies toleration, 
forbearance, patience with those who persist in wrong- 
thinking or wrong-doing. We cannot exercise charity 
toward those whose acts we honor and applaud. 
"Charity," we are told '^ covers a multitude of sins," but 
it is repentance that lets fall the curtain of oblivion. 
To have fought bravely for what he " believed to be 
right," would of itself have entitled this " ex-Confeder- 
ate " to that honorable regard which courage and sm- 
cerity must always merit. Even to have submitted 
honorably to defeat, though he had never come to be- 
lieve the cause for which he fought to have been wrong, 
or recognized the evil attending "the Avithering, blight- 
ing curse of slavery," would have entitled him to that 
charity which our comrades and the country ha\^e so 
abundantly bestowed upon those who stood with him, 
pari-delictors in the wrong which underlay that woful 
strife. When he steps out of the ranks of those who 
yielded their arms but did not surrender their opinions; 
when he saj^s, " You were right and I was wrong," 
there can be no more talk of Gharity. Such a declara- 
tion is the substantial basis of reconciliation, amity, re- 
established union. We extend to that man. Blower, 
not the fig-leaf of charity, but the right hand of 
friendship — the guaranty of a trust that no future 
difference can for a moment weaken, much less destroy. 
To him the error of the past has become a beacon to 



92 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

warn from like error in the future. Realizing the na- 
ture of that wrong which it required so much precious 
blood to obliterate, he will naturally be very heedful 
of human right hereafter. We do not know what his 
political affiliations may be. If he means what he 
says we hardly care. The destiny of the country, the 
riD:hts and liberties of the humblest and the weakest, 
are as safe in the hands of such a man as they would 
have been in poor dear Joe's in that last hour of sweet 
self-sacrifice. 

Have I ever uttered a word or penned a line. 
Blower, to imply distrust or encourage disparagement 
of such men as he — twice-told heroes, who dared not 
only to fight for what they believed to be right, but stand 
forth afterward and confess that it was wrong 'i Xever, 
Blower, never! In this sweet sanctuary of spotless 
love, with the rustle of angel pinions on the incense- 
freighted air, let me solemnly aver that never for one 
moment had such thought lodgment in my heart! 
On the contrary, my heartfelt sorrow and hottest, most 
indignant scorn have ever been evoked by the fact 
that our countrymen, sometimes even our comrades, 
will draw no distinction between those who deplore the 
wrong for which they fought, perceive " the blighting 
curse "' which slavery was, and those who, unrepentant 
of evil, still exult in the havoc which was wrought and 
seek to perpetuate the wrong which Joe died to de- 
stroy. The brave ma,n who repents can be trusted with 
to-morrow's destiny ; but he who has learned nothing 
by defeat ; he who boasts only of the prowess he dis- 
played in the support of evil ; he who while clamoring 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 93 

for charity for himself, can set his foot with ruthless 
violence upon the rights of others ; he who will hold 
and exercise authority secured by unlawful suppress- 
ion of the will of a majority ; in short, all those 
whose only claim to charit}^ is that they have sinned, 
whose only guaranty of wisdom is that they counseled 
evil and organized disaster, and whose only certificate 
of patriotism is that they were valiant upholders of 
oppression — these and every one of them. Blower, is a 
far more dangerous enemy of liberty to-day than when 
he stood among the hosts of treason over against us on 
the battle-field, or sat in the councils of our confedera- 
ted foes. The spirit that strips the freedman of his 
rights to-day in defiance of the law, in purpose is not 
less malign, and in its consequences is far more dan- 
gerous, than that which yesterday used the forms of law 
to debar the slave of his liberty. To give such men 
charge of our national affairs is not less sacrilegious 
than to intrust the Ark of the Covenant to the care of 
uncleansed ITzzas. 

While we would honor and trust the valiant soldier 
who confesses that his cause was wrong ; while we even 
regard with profound respect the hard-fibered veteran 
who can not yet surrender the baleful dogmas of yes- 
terday, we would no more think of intrusting the 
slightest atom of national power to one who has no 
regret for the part he took in promoting rebellion, and 
who can see nothing wrong in the past except the 
course of the government in suppressing the rebellion 
and freeing the slave — I say, Blower, and I say it rev- 
erently in this holiest of earthly tabernacles — I would 



94 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

no sooner trust such a man with the lightest tittle of 
national authority, than I would give a sleeping babe 
to a murderer who laughingly boasted of infantile 
slaughter he had wrought. Kight is right. Only fools 
intrust precious things to those who make a boast of 
evil-doing. It is a marvelously silly notion, Blower, 
that the slave-master — he who fought and bled for the 
right to oppress and still believes in the white man's 
right to control the black — is, by these very facts, made 
the fittest guardian of the freedman's liberty. It is only 
when he sees the error of the past that he becomes wor- 
thy to minister at freedom's shrine — a shrine which is 

To be approached and touched with serious fear 
With hands made pure and hearts of faith severe, 
Like to the priesthood of the One Divine ! 

June 6, 1885. 



PUEITAI^ OE CAVALIER. 



IT is a curious thing, Blower, that our Southern 
brethren should be so peculiarly sensitive about 
what is said concerning themselves, or the ideas and 
institutions of the South. One would suppose, from 
the energy and persistency with which they assert 
their individual and collective superiority over the 
rest of mankind, that they would be entirely undis- 
turbed by the opinions of those whom they profess to 
esteem so lightly. Instead of this, however, we find 
their ears always strained to catch the slightest mur- 
mur of disparagement; and their suspicion even more 
alert to imagine depreciation where none is intended. 
One of these friends writes angrily of our remarks in 
reference to " Stonewall " Jackson, asserting without 
scruple that we -'praised Jackson in order to more ef- 
fectually disparage Lee." 

We had neither motive nor desire as he should have 
seen, Blower, to lessen by so much as one pen-stroke 
the just fame of the commander of the Army of E'orth- 
ern Virginia. Even if we had the disposition we have 
not the power to do so. The story of his life is written 
in the history of that great day by his own hand. The 
humble and comparatively unknown actors in the 
world's great drama may perhaps be misunderstood or 
misrepresented in history, but those who lead great 
movements, by that very fact become their own biogra- 

95 



96 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

phers. All may not be apparent at a glance. Time 
may be required to unravel some of the hieroglyphics ; 
but the real history of a great life is always written 
before its end is reached. This record every one has 
the right to read and construe for himself. 

But the jealousy of our Southern friends is as base- 
less and absurd as their clamor for charity. The peo- 
ple of the North — the upholders of national power in 
the great conflict — have only little less, if indeed they 
have any less, interest in the fair fame of the leaders 
of the Confederate armies than the people of the South 
themselves. They were types of American as well as of 
merely Southern character. The foundations of their 
excellence were laid broad and deep on the firm basis 
of our national life. It was only the bias given to 
their powers that was distinctively Southern. As 
men they were the nation's children. Their glory 
lives to adorn the nation's history. Their errors and 
weaknesses are either buried in the pitiful tomb of a 
lost cause or remain a heritage, shameful or reproach- 
ful, as the case may be, of that civilization which not 
only blighted noble lives but handicapped a whole peo- 
ple in the race of progress. It is to the credit of our 
American life that it produced such men as Lee 
and Jackson; and to the everlasting discredit of South- 
ern life and institutions that they cast upon such men, 
the disadvantage and weighed down their fame with 
the odium of a cause which must continue to grow 
more reprehensible, if not even more detestable, with 
the lapse of years. 

So far as favor is concerned, Blower, there is per- 



THE VETEBAN AND HIS PIPE. 97 

haps no reason why the supporter of the national cause 
should incline to magnify the fame of Jackson rather 
than that of Lee. In doing so, in truth, I only gave 
utterance to that instinctive cry of the South in the 
hour of her deepest humiliation : " If Stonewall " Jack- 
son had only lived this thing would never have hap- 
pened to us. " It is amazing how universal was this 
sentiment. I venture to say, Blower, that we have 
not a comrade who served for even a month in the sub- 
jugated territory after Lee's surrender, who did not 
hear it a thousand times, alike from those who fought 
and those who watched, from old and young, from 
male and female. That they are becoming jealous of 
the fame of the chief when contrasted with that of the 
subordinate may, perhaps, be an indication that the 
sting of regret for what was not accomplished is giving 
way to a curious exultation in what was actually 
achieved. 

We, who can have no such bias, Blower, may even 
now hold the balance fairly between these, our great 
foemen, and foretell with certainty the verdict of the 
future on their merits. Both were men of whose fame 
and achievements any people might well be proud. 
Both were men of spotless personal character. Despite 
the fine-spun ethical disquisitions by which it has re- 
centl}- been attempted to distinguish between the offi- 
cial and the private character of public men, we who 
are of yesterday. Blower, must ever note as first among 
the claims to renown the fact of personal purity. We re- 
member with especial pride, therefore, that the great 
names of our climacteric era, upon both sides of the 
7 



98 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

great controversy, were men against whose private 
characters no word of reproach was ever truthfully ut- 
tered. This first element of deserv^ed fame was sup- 
plemented in both the characters under consideration 
by intellectual and manly characteristics of the very 
first order. The one was a most accomplished soldier 
— a subtle and elusive strategist to whom war was a 
game in which he was so conscious of his own excel- 
lence that he was never quite able to eliminate himself 
and his fame from the problem he was endeavoring to 
solve. The other was a thunderbolt of war to whom 
the end was everything. All that lay between him 
and victory was unconsidered dust. He himself was 
nothing to himself. He counted his fame of no more 
value than his life, and staked both without a moment's 
hesitation, whenever the aspect of the conflict seemed 
to demand. The one had the misfortune to fall in a 
subordinate position in which he had already outshone 
his great chief. The other had the misfortune to live 
after the close of a mighty conflict, in which he won 
little honor and no victories after the fall of his great 
subordinate. The one has had the greater measure of 
adulation ; the other the still more flattering tribute of 
having made his name a thing of terror to his enemies, 
so that his simple presence was accounted by them the 
sure presage of disaster. 

It is folly. Blower, to suppose that any American 
who has a spark of pride in his country's history does 
not exult in the fame of such men as these. No one 
doubts that the motives of both were patriotic, accord- 
ing to their respective ideas of what constituted pa- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. \)\) 

triotism. The one was a theorist who sacrificed a well- 
deservecl fame to tlie dogma of state rights. He be- 
lieved that Virginia had a riglit to command his sword 
and services. In obedience to her behest, from a fine 
and pecuhar sense of honor, he sacrificed his own views 
of poHcy — his own ideas of the ultimate good of the 
whole country — and became the zealous instrument of 
a popular impulse the wisdom of which he may at least 
be said to have doubted. His conduct was animated 
by a conviction that Yirginia had a right to secede, to 
establish an independent government, or ally herself 
with other political communities in a confederate na- 
tionality, as she saw fit ; and that he, representing the 
honor and dignity of the Lees and all their kindred, 
was in duty bound to obey her mandate zealously and 
faithfully, no matter what might be his individual be- 
lief as to the consequences. It can hardly be shown 
that he was at any time very sanguine of the result. 
His religious instincts were strong, and his belief in 
the abstract right of secession is unquestionable. The 
confidence which he so often expressed in the divine 
favor was no doubt based on this conviction as to the 
right of Virginia, acting as an independent common- 
wealth, to choose her own governmental form and po- 
litical affiliations. Beyond this his confidence did not 
go. There was, with him, no burning sense of injus- 
tice done or threatened — no deep conviction of an un- 
avoidable necessity — no profound belief that the pros- 
perity, happiness, and ultimate destiny of a great peo- 
ple demanded the establishment of the Confederacy 
and the appeal to arms. It is even doubtful if he had 



100 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

any definite liope of success until Jacl<:son's wonderful 
campaign in the Yalley of the Shenandoah seemed 
to give assurance of ultimate victory. The honor of 
a great name and loyalty to Virginia were the motives 
that inspired Eobert E. Lee. 

These were noble and worthy motives, Blower, 
alike honorable to the man and creditable to the peo- 
ple of whom he was a part. IS'o base or sordid ambi- 
tion and no taint of personal dishonor can be attributed 
to him. He was a knightly and chivalrous champion of 
a cause not only ill-starred, but based on evil purpose 
and expressly designed to promote and perpetuate a 
wrong. It was not a broad and generous devotion to 
the principles of human freedoni, nor a consuming de- 
sire for the good of his fellows that inspired his action, 
but only a strained and fanciful sense of honor — the 
noblesse oblige of a technical allegiance and an honored 
name. 

Far different was it with Jackson. He was a man 
of a nobler, if not so romantic, a type. He had not 
time to think of himself, and was not burdened with 
any ancestral array whose ghostly mandates were 
binding on his conscience. Practically, he was the 
first of h'is line. His family, though honorable enough, 
was humble, which, in the social organization of the 
South, means more than can be well understood at the 
!N^orth. Compared with Lee he was decidedly his 
inferior in social rank. He was one of the tolerated 
classes of that day at the South, who in effect sat 
" below the salt." He was of the least esteemed of the 
professions — a schoolmaster. His merits as a man and 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 101 

an instructor had brought him a certain prestige. Lee 
was born with the right to command ; Jackson had to 
win it. Tlie haughtiest Virginian was proud to serve 
under the aristocratic soldier, whose courtly manner 
and distinguished descent gave him an admitted pre- 
eminence among them. It was far otherAvise with the 
scrubby, saturnine professor, who had no title to rank 
among them except his technical knowledge and the 
commission which he held. He was a commander, not 
a leader. The rule which he established when he first 
issued orders taking command at Harper's Ferry was 
that of the soldier, not that of the man. Half of his 
subordinates felt themselves his superior in everything 
but military technique. He represented no social or 
political leadership. The men who were called upon 
to obey him felt humiliated rather than honored by his 
preferment. " He was regarded as a very worthy per- 
son," said a distinguished Southern gentleman, whose 
relations with him up to that time were peculiarly 
close, " but there was nothing in his social position, 
family, or previous career, to give any promise of the 
remarkable qualities he afterward displayed." The 
words were spoken years after his death, and Jackson's 
fame had in a peculiar manner reflected honor on the 
man who uttered them, but the cool, even tone in 
which they were spoken was not entirely devoid of the 
idea of patronage even then. The fact is that Jackson 
represented the type of Southern life which was dis- 
tinctly considered not " the best." He was a good 
enough man, a worthy person, a useful citizen ; but the 
peculiar and indescribable flavor of Southern gentle- 



102 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

manhood was hardly recognizable in his personality 
until his sword had cut his way to the first rank among 
the soldiers of his day. He had no prestige, no polit- 
ical influence, no following. He had not even any con- 
fidant, and is not known to have had any aspiration. 
He had his sword, his brain, and an unwavering con- 
viction. 

This man had never any doubt. With rehgious 
instincts even stronger than those of his superior, he 
fought for a cause which he believed to be wholly and 
divinely right. He believed that he saw the hand of 
God in the great conflict, and gave himself to the 
divine service as humbly and self-forgetfully on the 
field of battle as in the performance of the peaceful 
duties of the church, which he had thitherto discharged. 
In his belief the appeal to arms w^as not made in sup- 
port merely of a state's right to secede, but in assertion 
of a nation's highest right and divinest privilege — in 
support of a social order, established by the express 
commandment, and perpetuated and maintained b}^ the 
special favor and protection, of the Almighty. His 
tender conscience cast a charm over an institution, 
many of w^hose aspects were especially horrible and 
degrading. To his stern but tender Christianity, 
slavery represented, not only the Divine injunction, 
but a burden of onerous duty. With him the patri- 
archial theory w^hich was claimed as its philosophic 
basis, was crystallized into rigorous but beautiful fact. 
The " man-servant and the maid-servant " in his house- 
hold were not simple instruments of avarice or luxury. 
The slave was to his mind an actual charge upon his 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 103 

Christian charity. The African had been brought to 
this land, as he believed, to be redeemed. He never 
once dreamed of him as an equal, except in his right to 
salvation. Bondage, subordination, he accounted a 
privilege to the bondman, and a burden and a duty to 
the master. The southern cause was, to his apprehen- 
sion, simply a movement in support of divine order, 
and in furtherance of a divine purpose. His own 
relations with the institution had not been so intimate 
or extended a.s to corrupt his feeling, or to abate the 
sincerity of his belief. He did his duty as a Christian 
master w^th assiduity, zeal, and tenderness. In his 
view the slave was simply a heathen, incapable of 
development to the point of self-direction, who was 
subjected to the white man in order that he might be 
kept from the sins of barbarism, and given an oppor- 
tunity for salvation. 

He thought the southern people had been divinely 
fitted for the evangelization and perhaps the ultimate 
civilization of the race thus intrusted to their guardian- 
ship. He recognized the fact that this preparation had 
made the south a distinct and peculiar people, and he 
believed that a high religious duty and a most exalted 
destiny demanded the preservation and maintenance of 
these distinctive features. He believed the events in 
which he w^as taking part were the subject of prophecy, 
so that the cause for which he fought became as much 
a part of his religious belief as the sacraments of the 
church to Avhich he belonged. 

Tender as he was by nature, he was a zealot with 
a heart of adamant. He did not hate, nor did he 



104 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

wish to harm or persecute. He simply abhorred evil. 
He regarded the opposition of the north to slavery not 
so much as an intrusion upon the master's right as an 
interference with his duty — a sort of religious libertin- 
ism from which the south was bound by the most 
sacred obligations to protect her people and their insti- 
tutions. He was not a man of words. His convictions 
showed only now and then through the dense armor of 
impenetrable reserve in which he clothed his life and 
in the seeming contradiction between acts which are 
reconcilable only on this hypothesis. 

In type and character he was to his chief almost 
identically what Cromwell was to Fairfax. ISTo man in 
history may more fitly be taken as the prototype of 
Lee than the able, courtly, honorable, yet conservative 
Parliamentary general of whom Milton wrote that his 

' ' name in arms tlirough Europe rings, 
Filling each mouth with envy or with praise." 

At that day, and for a long time afterward, it is 
unquestionable that he was regarded as a far abler gen- 
eral than he who at length became the Lord Protector. 
Yet, looking at the history of that time, it is easy to 
see that the chief owed more to his subordinate than 
he was able to give to the great man who was growing 
into commanding stature in the shadow of his fame. 
Without Cromwell's iron will, tireless energy, and 
readiness to accept responsibility, Fairfax's fame 
would hardly have exceeded that of a score of his 
contemporaries. Like Lee he was already an honored 
and accomplished soldier, before the "Lord of the 
Fens" had organized his "Ironsides," or looked into 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 105 

the face of an enemy in battle array. Like him, too, 
whenever he fought without the support of his great 
Ueutenant, his battles were indecisive or his victories 
unprofitable. But for Cromwell, Fairfax's career 
would undoubtedly have ended at Marston Moor, and 
but for Jackson's marvelous victories on the Shenan- 
doah, and bis lightning-like blow upon the enemy's 
right at Mechanicsville, it is more than probable that 
Lee's military fame would hardly have been greater to- 
day than it was when he resigned his commission in 
the United States army to offer his services to Virginia. 

It should be remembered in comparing these men 
that Jackson had, within a single month, defeated four 
armies, each greater than his own, and all threatening 
one of the gate wavs of the confederate capital, and, 
brought to his superior an army which already believed 
itself invincible, before Lee had ever fought a battle. 
The kingly soldier simply absorbed the relentless 
fighter's fame, and until retrospective analysis began 
to separate the two lives into their elements, perhaps 
unconsciously built up renown upon his lieutenant's 
works and attributes. 

We do not seek to depreciate Lee, Blower. He 
Avas a splendid type of that distinctively southern char- 
acter which is rapidly becoming extinct — a type to be 
mourned by sentimentalists and poets, but whom the 
world will hardly miss a hundred years hence. Jack- 
son was a type of that universal American character 
which puts conviction above self— the end above the 
means. He would never have hesitated when the 
necessity was apparent, to put slaves into the field to 



106 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

fight for their liberty, for he would have accounted 
such service a display of manhood sufficient to entitle 
any slave to freedom. He would never have allowed 
his veterans to suffer for food in the trenches about 
Petersburg, while at Greensboro and Danville were 
stored supplies enough to last his army for a year. He 
would never have donned his best uniform and 
mounted his jeweled sword, in order to overawe with 
a show of outward splendor that simple soldier who, 
reckless of everything except the result, had pursued 
his fleeing enemy with sleepless ardor for ten days and 
nights only to stand abashed and pitiful before the 
gaudily bedecked captain of a vanquished and famish- 
ing army. If this woful duty had fallen to the lot of 
"Stonewall" Jackson, one can easily imagine with 
what unassuming self-forgetfulness it would have been 
performed. He would have met his battle-stained 
conqueror in a garb that would have bespoken his 
active participation in the tremendous toils his army 
had but recently endured. He would not have posed 
for effect. He would not have been engaged in con- 
templation of himself focused in tlie camera of history, 
but his whole thought would have been of the people 
whose cause he had sustained until the last extremity. 
Grant and Jackson belonged essentially to the same 
type of American manliood. As soldiers both were 
impassive, self-reliant, and relentless. Neither had or 
could have any confidants of their purposes. To a few 
both were alike warm and tender ; to the many, cold 
and distant. Both were zealots — one in the cause of 
the Federal Union, as the representative of human 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 107 

liberty, and the other in the maintenance of what 
he deemed a divine order. It is to this type of 
manhood that the south owes not only the fame which 
clings around the story of the struggle for separation, 
but also the far more marvelous supremacy which it 
has since achieved in the counsels of the nation whose 
allegiance it sought forever to renounce. 
June 13, 1885. 



''peace in the cloyer-scented 
era;^ 



THE odor of perique is in a modest room that looks 
out over bright waters, and traces of its dark viscid 
fiber show among the golden-brown granules, in the 
pouch wliicli Alice wrought. We smoked the pipe of 
peace again last night, Blower, while the cool breezes 
blew softly over the placid water, the stars trooped 
lazily through the summer sky, and lovers loitered on 
the moonlit beach. The strong mephitic odor of 
that curious variety of the nicotiana, which needs 
the richness of tropical alluvions and the steaming heat 
of southern seas for its perfection, speaks always to my 
mind of that friend Avho was once an enemy, Pascal 
Raines, the owner of Buckhead, or, as it used • to be 
termed, Buckhead Lodge, in the forks of the Ogee- 
chee. This is the twentieth 3^ear that we have met 
to smoke the calumet and fill the ditch of difference 
that absence digs between us, not with protestations, 
but with honest, manly assertions of individuality. 
Sometimes it has been a winter meeting, under the 
gray-bearded live oaks on some romantic hummock, 
where the mid-winter skies are soft as summer, and 
the air is rich with the united fragrance of fruits and 
flowers. Again, he has fled from the heats of a south- 
ern summer to the cool breezes of the northern main 
or the shadow of the snow-capped mountains Avith 

108 



T.HE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 109 

their somber evergreen mantle and cool streams flash- 
ing and purling over the rocks in its shadow. We 
have hunted and fished together — such hunting and 
fishing as decrepid veterans may do — and always count 
the week or month we spend witli each other one long 
holiday of healthful thought. When he goes back to 
his plantation to "reload," as he says, I return to the 
city's turmoil strengthened by w^hat he has brought 
me out of the silence of his isolation. 

We are a queer pair, Blower, Pascal Eaines and I. 
He loves to smoke perique in a long-stemmed Pow- 
hattan or Sally Lun. " On state occasions onl}^," as he 
says, does he indulge this luxury ; but he is always 
urging me to mix more or less of this seductive nar- 
caphthon, with the spicy leaf grown on the sunny Pied- 
mont slopes and ripened by ambrosial honey -dews, with 
which I am Avont to fill your polished bowl. I have 
thought sometimes that these contrasted tastes might 
be types of our respective natures ; but the fancy is 
not one I love to dwell upon. We entered yesterday 
on our annual holiday, and last night was our first com- 
munion at which we broke the bread of thought a year 
of silence had provided. 

We are a queer pair, yet he is almost as close a 
friend of these, my later years, as Joe was of my 
earlier days. It is strange that it should be so. Our 
lives Avere not shaped by kindred influences, nor did 
w^e learn to count the same things holy in our early 
days. With Joe and me fraternity was almost as 
much a birthright as if the same roof -tree had sheltered 
our cradles and the same mother nourished us upon her 



110 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

heart. We were formed in the same mold, tempered 
by the same fires. He was simply a type of the class to 
which I belonged. Thrown together in boyhood, we 
clung as naturally as magnet and iron. What Joe said, 
I had already felt ; what he did I was willing to aid 
in doing. All that made life worth living to him, was 
matter of aspiration, also, to me. We were sworn 
friends by the mere force of natural and apparent 
affinities. 

It is not so Avith this later friend who loves the 
heavy, resinous breath of the dark perique better than 
the spicy fragrance of the golden leaf which grows be- 
neath the dog-wood's shadow. The smoke-wreaths 
that curl about him are dark and dense as azure war- 
clouds in comparison with the pearl-fringed circlets 
that rise above your steaming bowl. 

He is Southern to the core, this friend of ours. 
Blower, and yet the red beard and light brown hair 
that frames his fair, full face bespeak a Saxon ancestry 
that goes back to the days when Gurtli wore a collar 
and black-browed Normans lorded it over blue-eyed 
churls. It is a curious fallacy that even yet types 
the Southern man to Northern apprehension as dark 
and saturnine in aspect. The truth is that the South- 
ern people are the purest English stock to be found 
upon the globe, outside of England itself. There is 
the peculiar American lankness of figure, it is true, 
but the gray-blue English eyes and neutral-tinted 
brown hair are more generally to be met with at 
the South than in any other part of the western con- 
tinent. This fact is not remarkable, though it seems 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. Ill 

almost incredible no doubt, to those in whose minds the 
conventional " Southerner " is still extant, and the real 
one unknown. Pascal Raines was the master of al- 
most unnumbered slaves, and is still the lord of many 
acres — how many I do not know, for he speaks but 
seldom of these things. I do know that life and 
duty have put heavy cares upon his shoulders since the 
close of the great conflict and he has not spared him- 
self in his efforts to provide for other's wants. 

I thought of these things as we sat together in 
pleasant converse or half-dreaming silence last night. 
Blower, and my thoughts almost unconsciously took 
form in words as I said mournfully : 

" You are the last of one of the old Southern fami- 
lies, are you not, Pascal?" 

" Humph," he responded, blowing the heavy smoke 
impatiently through the brown mustache which is be- 
ginning to show hints of gray. " I am of an old enough 
family, and happen to be the last male in the direct 
line, but I do not know as that fact justifies your dolo- 
rous tone. Besides I may yet marry some fair Yankee 
help-meet and bless the world with a dozen scions of 
the two best stocks on earth. How would you like 
that notion ? Ha, ha, my dear Thomas ben Nathan, 
I see you wince, and yet I am beginning to look upon 
it as both a philanthropic and a patriotic duty. You 
yourself, much as you exult in the Puritan, are half in- 
clined to mourn the Cavalier. 

He has given me this quaint appellation in our 
familiar intercourse ever since he learned my father's 
name. He professes to see some curious significance 



112 . THE VETERAN AND HlS PIPE. 

in the juxtaposition of the two names. I do not alto- 
gether accept his view, but it pleases his southern love 
of the quaint, almost grotesque, and I do not object. 

" I declare," he often says, " you are well named. 
Thomas the doubter is the son of Nathan the undoubt- 
mg — the Yankee that is springs from the Yankee that 
was. Your father must have been a prophet, Ben 
N^athan." 

This constant playful reference to my father, whom 
I especially revered, annoyed me at first. I do not 
mind it now, because it pleases my friend. 

" It is a curious thing," he continued musingly, 
" what notions you Northerners have of our ' old South- 
ern families. ' I have always been amused at the tone 
of reverent admiration or irreverent envy in which they 
are usually spoken of by your people. We, of course, 
are proud of them, but not at all in the way you seem 
to think. I am of kin to nearly all the old families of 
Georgia, a dozen South Carolina grandees, and several 
of the most dubiously-descended of Virginia stock. 
There was a Eaines among Oglethorpe's advisers. By 
the same token he got himself into trouble for opposing 
the introduction of slavery into the colony, being de- 
nounced by that eighteenth century evangelist White- 
field, who insisted upon slavery both as a good invest- 
ment and a means of grace for the heathen. That was 
what I call a comfortable doctrine. There is a rumor 
that the great preacher expended a considerable por- 
tion of the funds he had raised in the northern colonies 
in transplanting slavery into Georgia. I have never 
been able to think of this without laughing. Picture 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 113 

to yourself the saintly sire of a ISTew England abolition- 
ist contributing money to hire a South Carolina slave- 
holder to move across the Savannah in order to plant 
the patriarchal institution securely on the virgin soil of 
Georgia ! What a merry mocker is time ! It cost the 
'I^orthern colonies' a hundred and fifty years after- 
wards, three hundred and seventy -five thousand of their 
bravest, slain outright in battle, to undo what they hired 
Whitefield to establish. We lost as many more, I sup- 
pose, and the number who were half killed — who lost 
legs or arms like us, or were otherwise battered and 
defaced by war, must have been two or three times as 
many more. Oh, it was big interest that the laches of 
that day bore in our time. What say you to that 
notion, Thomas ben Nathan, thou child of the Puritan ? 

" It's not strange, " he went on, after we had had 
our quiet laugh at his grim humor, "that time is called 
a whirligig. You see, my sire was right and yours was 
probably wrong, on the A^ery question on which we 
differed so strongly that each left a limb on the battle- 
field — you on the right side and I on the wrong one. 

" As I said, my ancestor was opposed to introducing 
slavery into Georgia I don't know anything about 
the ground of his opposition, and indeed it does not 
matter. Perhaps it was his own experience. I don't 
know whether it Avas he or his father, but one of them 
had a bit of memory that ought to haA^e made him an 
enemy of slaA^ery all his life. What Avas that ? He 
Avas brought oA^er from somcAvhere — Scotland or Eng- 
land, nobody knoAvs Avhicli — and sold for an apprentice 
to pay passage money and any other supposititious claim 



114 THE 7ETERAN AND HIS PIPE, 

of expenditure the ship's captain or the owners may 
have made in his behalf. That was in Virginia. Being 
a hlvely young fellow he brought a good price — 300 
pounds of tobacco, I have heard. His master seems to 
have moved southward. At least, he himself moved 
into the wilds of Georgia some time before Oglethorpe's 
settlement, and had thriftily }^re-empted about half a 
county, right in the forks of the Ogeechee, the only 
title he had being the good will of a Cherokee chief, a 
matchlock and his own nerve. These were good enough 
though. The gun itself was a formidable affair. It 
hung over the mantel in the house built on the site 
of his cabin, until you folks came through with Sher- 
man about Christmas, 1864. There wasn't much of 
anything left after you departed on your winding way 
' down to the sea.' 

" Oh, don't apologize. We've been over all that on 
the very spot. It was a brilliant movement, conduct- 
ed with a laxity of disci])line that would have been im- 
possible to an army drawn from any other people. 
That is all there was of it. Sherman had argued Grant 
into a belief that it was necessary and that he was the 
only man on earth who could do it. As a military 
movement, it has been vastly overrated both in diffi- 
culty and importance, but as an index of American 
character — of the actual results of republican insti- 
tutions — it cannot be too highly extolled. There were, 
it is true, many acts of pillage and some needless 
destruction of propert}^ For instance, there was no 
need to have taken my ancestor's superannuated fire- 
lock and sundry other moveables Avhich cumbered, or 



II 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 115 

adorned Buckhead Lodge, but it should always be re- 
membered to the credit of republican institutions that 
this army of invasion marched from Atlanta to the sea, 
subsisting itself mainly off the country through the 
agency of loosely organized bands of pillagers, without 
any non-combatant's life or woman's virtue being 
placed in peril. I am as proud of this, Thomas ben 
JSTathan, as you are of " Stonewall's " exploits on the 
Shenandoah, and in about the same way, I suspect. 
After all, though, I must say that I don't like Sherman 
— not because Buckhead was in his path — but because 
I don't. I don't like Sheridan, either. But if I must 
choose between stinking fish — as you did betwixt Lee 
and Jackson — I will take the one I least dislike and 
say : ' Give me Sheridan, or give me death, ' or, if it's 
just as hand}^, put the alternative first. 

" Oh, I know my words are not nicely chosen, but 
you will not take offense for you know just what I 
mean. It is useless for any one who fought for the 
Confederacy to claim that he doesn't feel sick and sore 
over those last days of its existence. It makes no dif- 
ference what his opinions may be now, one cannot con- 
template the destruction of the social order in which 
he was raised, and remember all that we did and suf- 
feredj without feeling something akin to animosity 
against the instruments most actively concerned in the 
most unpleasant phases of its demise. I don't believe 
Sherman would ever be well thought of along that 
line of march if he should live to rival Methu- 
selah in years. Yet he was kindness itself when 
the end came. It is really pitiable to see how 



116 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ready he was to give up everything, and trust to 
the honor of a vanquished foe for the peace of 
the future. Sheridan was a thousand times harder of 
heart (you see, Ben Nathan, I cannot help saying ' was ' 
— all this was ever so long ago, and you and I and all 
who had a hand in it have been in the past tense for 
ages), but Sheridan's cruelty was that of a soldier. He 
never shut his eyes on plunder, in a military sense, 
nor avoided responsibility for destruction. I do not 
think there is a more soldierly document in the lan- 
guage than his report of the ravages committed 
by his troops in making the rich valley of the 
Shenadoah unavailable as a source of supply for 
our armies or a well-provided highway for northern 
invasion. He shirked nothing. There were so 
many mills burned, so many cattle and horses 
seized, so many bridges destroyed, and all other 
needful damage done ' by order of the General com- 
manding. ' There is something Catonian in its brutal 
candor. It was barbarism, no doubt, but it was war — 
done in obedience to orders, and with a discipline as 
rigorous as that of the Eoman legion. Yes, I like him 
better than Sherman even yet. 

" Why have the South been so flush of abusive epi- 
thets applied to these men, and even to Grant himself? 
Well, it's a way we have, you know. No, it's not the 
result of war, nor to any great extent to be attributed 
to ' the chagrin of defeat, ' which you Northern senti- 
mentalists have spread out like a mantle of charity to 
cover our sins. We Southern people always were given 
to speaking rather well of ourselves, and not so very 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 117 

flatteringly of others. You of the North just reverse 
this rule. You keep soft words in stock for your 
enemies and lavish praise upon strangers, while you 
open the floodgates of abuse and detraction on each 
other. You have always fed us taffy and we have 
come to expect it. In the old ante-bellum days we 
ruled you with a rod of iron, though you always out- 
numbered us, and if there had been among you any of 
that unity of purpose that has always characterized the 
South, whenever it came to a question of asserting her 
rights or her power, the nation would have been 
homoo^eneous on the basis of ]^orthern sentiment lono: 
ago. 

"You suppose it was a natural result of slavery? 
Pshaw, Ben Nathan, what is the use of busying your- 
self forever in finding excuses for us. We don't care 
what made you Yankees what you are, and so do not 
trouble ourselves to discover apologies for your idiosyn- 
cracies. AVe know that you pride yourself on furnish- 
ing more of the milk of human kindness per capita 
than any other people on earth, and we trade upon 
that fact, just as you take advantage of a prospect 
of hostilities between England and Kussia to put 
up the price of grain. You are afflicted with a 
mania for forgiveness. For twenty years you have 
been begging us, in season and out of season, to allow 
you to forgive us. Strange as \"ou may think it, we 
do not find much fun in being forgiven. As to the active 
part of the doctrine, we don't know much about it. 
We don't forgive — to any great extent, at least. We 
do, sometimes, forget how we have been wronged; but 



118 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

as to owning that we were ever in the wrong ourselves, 
that is against "the genius of our people." Difficulties 
are ' healed u}) ' with us — literally. That is, they are 
left to grow over. Sometimes the wound heals and the 
cicatrix shows always afterward. Then, again, the 
the wound unites upon the outside fair and smooth, 
but rankles underneath to break out into angry and 
malignant action after many days. 

" Of course, you have at length worn us out. One 
can not resist concession always. After you had given 
up all you fought for, except the name ; when you re- 
nounced all remembrance of the war except the 
music and the ' spread-eagle ' ; when you quietly 
allowed us to take away the ballot you had so 
vauntingly bestowed upon the negro ; when, instead of 
counting a Southern white voter better than a J^orth- 
ern citizen by two-fifths as in the old slave days, you 
kindly gave us the odds of Africa in our favor ; when 
after we had sinned and had no wish to be forgiven, 
you put a club — nay a million clubs, or the power of a 
million of suppressed votes, in our hands — and begged 
us to beat and subjugate you therewith — when you did 
all this of your own free will and accord, I assure you, 
Ben Nathan, it was not in Southern human nature 
longer to resist. We did what you invited us to do, 
and relied upon your abounding charity to find excuses 
for our acts. You did not disappoint our expectations. 
"We wondered, but did not complain. You made the 
role of injured innocence so pleasant and profitable that 
we continued to play it with renewed zest. We made 
the air vocal, from year's end to year's end, with dolor- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 119 

ous complaint and unmerited sufferings. We 'kept 
your zeal for pardon so keenly alive that it was hardly 
safe for a Southern man to allow himself to be 
known as such at the ^North lest some sensitive 
soul should straightway unpack his box of charity and 
ask to pour the sweet-smelling ointment — the spikenard 
of forgiveness — upon his errant, unwashed feet. I be- 
lieve, Ben Nathan, I would have gone with you to 
the General Encampment of the Grand Army, on 
our way to the Eangely Lakes, just to have seen 
your old comrades unhinge your one arm, and hear 
them sing the old songs, but I couldn't risk it. I was 
afraid that as soon as they found out that it was a 
Yankee shell that took off my right-hand supporter, 
they would insist on passing me round for the kiss of 
peace and reconciliation, I can't stand that sort of 
thing, Ben Nathan. I never felt that I had much to 
forgive, and I don't like to be made a villain of by being 
everlastingly forgiven. I am really afraid of this ob- 
trusiveness of pardon. I never knew two fellows to 
keep on protesting mutual forgiveness who did not 
eventually renew their quarrel. So I will hide myself 
in the hills while you greet your brethren, if you must. 
" You must not be angry, Ben Nathan, but I do 
wish you Yankees had less sweetness and a little more 
gall. I know it is all genuine, of course, or try to 
believe that it is, because. I know you, but — but it isn't 
easy because it seems so unnatural and — well, hardly 
self-respecting. If you were right — as you claimed 
and as I am willing to admit, so far as I am concerned, 
and can now see — whv not stand on it and let us do 



120 THE VETERA]^ AND HIS PIPE. 

some of the " walking." Of course, we cannot hold out 
always and when you gave us a President who would 
not fight against the Confederacy even when drafted, 
with a genuine " Copperhead " Vice-President and 
a Cabinet containing only one Federal soldier to three 
Confederates and two " Copperheads,'- as you used to 
call them, of the tepid, doubting-Thomas order, of 
course, it seemed like old times and we were bound to 
profess at length ourselves satisfied and reconciled. 
But you know it is all a farce. 

" I tell you, Ben Nathan, we are two peoples just as 
much as you and I are two men. We are not satisfied 
and will not be till we have fortified and permanently 
secured what we now hold only as an outpost. You 
will sometime get tired of boasting of your charity. 
Then we shall tell each other the truth once more. 
War is a rough game, but rifles do not lie. Lead and 
powder are sometimes better medicaments for evil 
than spikenard and honey ; and when two peoples get 
far enough apart to have to decide questions arising 
betwixt them with the sword, it must be many a day 
before they groAV into one. You are entirely right 
in your opinion of " Stonewall " Jackson. He was the 
man on our side, not because he alone won victories, 
nor even because he was a ISTapoleon in strategy and 
marvelous rapidity of execution, but above all things 
because he was the incarnation of the Southern idea. 
I could tell you something about him myself, but — 
pshaw, what's the use ? The farce which we call life 
must be played out in order that the lie which we call 
history may be written ! " 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 121 

Our friend knocked the ashes from his pipe upon 
the window-sill and bade us good night, Blower, before 
we had half awakened from the dreamy mood which 
the unaccustomed Perique or his still more unusual 
words had induced. It is strange that he should be my 
friend. Blower. It is the harmony of the unlike — the 
unison of chords that mark the limits of consonance. 
Yet we can never doubt the manhood of this manliest 
type of a concurrent but dissimilar life. Our friend- 
ship was pledged upon the battle-field amid the dark- 
ness that followed on a doubtful day, in the picket- 
guarded ground which neither army would yield to 
the foe. Our first hand-clasp left a bloody imprint by 
which each attested his sincerity. We know, Blower, 
that a truer, nobler friend one could not have. Yet 
we can not agree. Is it because there is an actual, 
irreconcilable difference — an indefinable right and 
wrong — that lies between us, or do we think in differ- 
ent planes which overlap but do not meet ? 

June 26, 1885. 



"THE DAT WE CELEBRATE;^ 



FOE the first time, Blower, our great national holi- 
day finds me in a state of curious uncertainty in 
regard to the future that is to grow out of our marvel- 
ous past. In those early days when the people gath- 
ered in exultant but serious convocation in every 
hamlet in the land ; when old and young and rich and 
poor assembled, perhaps in the house of God, perhaps 
in that temple of liberty which our Puritan forefathers 
builded in stern simplicity on every village green — the 
town-house where met the wittenagemote in which the 
statesmen of the past were trained — or in those other, 
nobler temples still, wdiose aisles were canopied with 
verdure, through which the sunshine sent its golden 
shafts, and through the interstices of which the blue 
sky smiled down serene approval — in those days we 
could not doubt. The voice of prayer and the 
eloquence of an intense, if somewhat boastful, patriot- 
ism stamped upon the boyish heart a reverence for the 
day which marks the nation's birth that no lapse of 
time or frost of age can ever dim." Next to the Christ 
cradled in the manger, in our boyish reverence, was 
the nation cradled in the wilds of a new world. In 
our childish fancy the courage, fortitude and wisdom 
of our fathers in building a government upon these 
shores based upon a principle never before practically 
recognized in political organization, was only less mar- 
is^ 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 123 

velous than that creative power which looked on 
chaos and said : " Let there be light ! " 

This impression was made more vivid by the simple 
but unusual pageantry which attended this celebration. 
The fumes of gunpowder seemed fit incense to offer to 
the manes of heroes whose memories we worshiped. 
The cannon's roar was, to our ears, the proud defiance 
which liberty heralded through its brazen lips to a 
hostile but admiring world. The bright banner that 
floated gaily in the summer sunshine was to us the 
emblem of a new dispensation, not less certainly divine 
than that which the Invisible traced on tables of stone 
on the cloud-curtained summit of Sinai, or that which 
fell from the lips of the golden-haired Galilean on the 
sunny slopes of Olivet. How reverently we gazed 
upon the " venerable men who had come down to us 
from a former generation ! " How the orator's glow- 
ing periods fired our young hearts to emulate the deeds 
of those whose wisdom and prowess we felt it a glori- 
ous privilege to worship even afar off ! With all this, 
the unaccustomed tumult, the drum, the fife, perhaps a 
uniformed brass band, the awkward evolutions of ill- 
trained but gaily-clad militia, the universal freedom 
from restraint, and mirthful license, queer ly w^edded 
with serious purpose and high resolve ! This was the 
Fourth of July of our boyhood. Blower. 

We recall it with a queer shamefacedness to-day — 
we, in whose hearts its memory still lives, almost as 
much a thing of sorrow as of joy. I would not for the 
world, old friend, tell the story of the aspirations it 
inspired to the wise and cynical children of to-day. 



124 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

How would they not sneer, Blower, at the thought of 
grave men and serious-minded matrons sitting with 
earnest faces, perhaps even with quivering lips, to hear 
'Hhe old, old story" of that time when 

' ' Men went forth 
To plant the seed with tears," 

and of the wonderful harvest which a kindly Provi- 
dence vouchsafed. We would not think of telling 
them how fierce a battle Joe and I once fought, under 
the inspiration of this day, with twelve fire-crackers 
and a lead cannon, which we cast about a wooden core 
in a paper mold, with as much care and probably more 
anxiety than Herr Krupp ever bestowed upon a hun- 
dred-ton gun. ]!^ot for a king's ransom would we have 
the high-school children, whose commencement exer- 
cises we last night witnessed, know that, at their age, 
our days were full of silly thoughts and our nights of 
sillier dreams of noble deeds that waited to he done 
— of that liberty for which our fathers fought made 
more complete, and the nation they established made 
more glorious and more free by our endeavor. The 
hot blood rushes to the cheek which nevermore will 
lose the brawn it caught when banners waved and 
trumpets clanged, at the very thought of the calm 
scorn with which the youth of to-day, who delights in 
nothing so much as in decrying our institutions, would 
sneer at such sentimentality. There is something as 
holy as the memory of a dead love to us, Blower, in 
that peculiar intermixture of patriotic and religious 
aspiration which characterized the thought of that 
time. Christmas and the Fourth of July were, per- 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 125 

l]ai3S, no nearer together than they are to-day, but both 
seemed tinged with an earnestness of tone that is 
somehow lacking in the present. It was an atmosphere 
that did not favor doubt. Men believed so strongly 
that they have lived to wonder at the fervor of their 
faith, and marvel at the grandeur of their aspiration. 

Something of this — as much as my lips could well 
utter, Blower — I told last night to our friend that was 
once an enemy, Pascal Eaines, expressing the belief 
that Joe's life and thought were largely shaped by 
the serious and earnest observance of this national 
anniversary; and venturing the hope that its continu- 
ous and universal observance, in the future, would 
exert a very great and beneficent influence on the 
fortune of our curiously re-united realm. ••' Indeed," I 
said at length, made bolder by his silence, '-I think 
this universal holiday, dedicated to liberty, heroism and 
patriotic devotion, observed, as it is sure to be in some 
sort of way, by rich and poor and high and low, of 
every race and creed, in every corner of our land, cannot 
fail to exert a very powerful influence upon coming 
generations and incline them to unity of thought and 
aspiration, by the mere force of a common inheritance 
of fame." 

I said this anxiously, Blower, for somehow I dreaded 
to expose my cherished theory of sentimental assimila- 
tion and peaceful unification of discordant elements 
through the gentle compulsion of a common tradition, 
to the analysis and criticism of this almost too honest 
friend. He was silent for a long time, looking out 
upon the blue waters where the gibbous moon and 



126 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

silvered cloud-peaks were reflected in a waveless mirror. 
Clouds of heavy, perfumed smoke came from his lips. 
His face grew fixed, and the lids drooped sadly over 
the brave, true eyes. 

" * Dream of dreamers since the morn 
When the dreamer Hope was born,' " 

he murmured at length, in an absent tone as if he had 
forgotten me and my theory. I waited a while to see 
if he would continue and then asked : 
" What do you mean ? " 

"The ineradicable propensity of the sentimental 
philosopher to believe that whatever of good he desires 
will certainly come to pass because in his view of 'the 
eternal fitness of things' it ought to be," he answered 
with a smile. " Your genuine optimist will stop at no 
absurdity. He vaults lightly over obstacles which 
reason declares insuperable, and relies witli the utmost 
assurance upon causes that common sense shows to be 
uttterly inadequate. Yet he is oftener right than 
wrong. A belief in one's ability to overcome obstacles 
oftentimes not only implies, but actually constitutes, 
the power to do so. Do you know, Ben JSTathan, that 
this attribute was the real source of that hero's power 
who is now fighting his last battle on Mount McGregor ? 
I have always had a quarrel with you Northern people, 
for failing to appreciate this man to whom you owe so 
much. 

'' I do not like him because he was the instrument of 
our humiliation. A man may surrender in good faith, 
and yet not love the things which remind him of that 
fact. One may even admit himself to have been wrong 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 127 

and kiss the rod of chastisement, without having any 
very warm feeling for the rod itself. Despite all your 
curious northern theories, Ben ISTathan, chastening and 
even penitence, constitutes a very poor soil in which to 
OTOW the tender shoots of love. The smartino; back 
may promote humility, but the whipping-post is not a 
favorite trellis for the vine of affection. 

" Yet I verily believe that we are more inclined to do 
justice to your great hero than the people of the l^orth 
themselves. You have never more than half appreci- 
ated Grant because he simply lived his own life without 
affectation or servility. He did not choose to efface 
himself because he happened to be a public servant. 
E'ay, I do not think he could have done so, for his 
simple heart had no idea that this was what your 
tyranny required. All the same he would not dance 
whenever you chose to pipe, and so you half disap- 
proved your own best military exemplar. You want 
your heroes to be like the monsters in a museum — 
forever on exhibition for the public entertainment. 
You would be willing to put them in golden cages 
and keep them sleek and fat, if only they would allow 
themselves to be punched with parasols and singed 
with cigar stumps, roaring softly now and then, for 
the amusement of the women and children. 

" There he lies at Mount McGregor now. You note 
the stubbornness with which he resists the last great foe's 
approaches, and occasionally speak of the pluck he 
displays in these last hours, but your hearts are 
not wrung with sorrow, and you hardly seem to 
be aware that you are losing a man whose peer 



128 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

the nation may not see again in centuries. Look 
at the heaps of circulars, the myriads of advertise- li 
ments of entertainment for to-morrow. Think how 
you people — the liberty -loving, self-complacent ISTorth 
— will celebrate the Fourth of July — the "Nation's 
birthday," as you love to call it ! Excursions by the 
thousand on the water and on the land, dinners, dances, 
picnics, horse races, ball games, rowing matches — 
everything conceivable except a gathering for any 
earnest purpose or with any patriotic tone. At how 
many of these meetings where your people will assemble 
to-morrow do you suppose Grant's name will be men- 
tioned, or the sufferings of the greatest of your heroes 
be given a single thought, unless, indeed, kind Azrael 
should lay his finger on the patient heart to-night ! In 
that event some thousands of your fellow veterans would 
mourn, but the great bulk of the fresh life which must 
make up your to-morrow, would note the fact only to 
carp at such inconsiderate marring of their holiday. 

" Suppose it were our Lee who had thus fought for 
months with death, and was now dvinf^r in sio:ht of his 
people ! We are not much on alms, and charity, and 
reform, Ben Nathan, but we stand by our own through 
thick and thin, and are proud to honor those whose 
deeds have honored us. In Lee's case the agony was 
brief, but the South hardly breathed between the first 
announcement of his peril and the proclamation of his 
death. Our heroes are as household gods — reverently 
worshiped in every home; yours as bric-a-brac pur- 
chased at auction and valued only for its cost, rarity 
and ornamental character ! 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 129 

" As I said, Grant, as a military leader, was an opti- 
mist of the most intense and unreasoning sort. He 
never anticipated failure nor made any preparation for 
defeat. If he met with a repulse he replied with an at- 
tack. Having decided to undertake a task, no matter 
how impracticable it seemed, he never thought it possible 
that he could fail. Coolly considered, no more fool- 
hardy thing was ever attempted than the capture of 
Donelson by storm with the force under his command. 
Eat the fact that he thought he could do it, made it 
possible to this man, to. whom to believe was to accom- 
plish. Look again at the dislodgement of Bragg's army 
from Missionary Kidge, by assault. Who but Grant 
would have attempted it ? Who but he would have 
believed it possible? I was there and saw it, Ben 
Xathan ! Saw that thin line scale that circling ridge 
as sharp-pitched as a gothic roof — four hundred feet of 
shingly slope broken only by two lines of breastworks 
which it would have required no little nerve to storm 
on an open plain, and held as they were by an army 
not greatly inferior to his own in numbers ! Gods ! It 
was a miracle I would never have believed 'without 
the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes ! ' I 
could hardly believe it, even as I fled down the flinty 
path that led rearward from Bragg's headquarters, 
with a routed rabble at my heels, leaving the horse by 
which I had stood and watched the wondrous pageant, 
to furnish some lucky Yankee a mount in lieu of his 
grass-fed barebones lost at Chickamauga. Perhaps you 
got it Ben Nathan, and my despatches, too. You did ? 
Well, I am glad it feU into appreciative hands. 
9 



130 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

''"What did it? Grant's optimism — nothing else 
That was unquestionably the strongest position an army 
ever held. Even after the abandonment of Lookout, 
fifty thousand men ought to have kept it against four, 
times their number. The flanks were easily defensible 
and the front impregnable by nature. Every man in 
those triple lines of works knew this, and I believe it 
was the astounding audacity of the attempt that para- 
lyzed their energies and transformed them on the in- 
stant, from valiant soldiers into panic-stricken fugitives. 
In the open plain beneath, Grant had mai^ched and 
countermarched, for three days, his splendidly equipped 
host, in sight of every man in our army. These men 
had asked in wonder, does he mean to assault ? With 
the conclusion that he did came the almost irresistible 
conviction that only the certainty of overlapping the 
unassailable flanks and entrapping them in their secure 
fastness could induce an attempt so apparently futile. 
It was optimism against Gibraltar, and optimism won ! 

" I have a great respect for optimism, Ben IS'athan, as 
you see. It is a wonderful quality in a military 
leader, and in all lines of effort works miracles ; but in 
order ^to do so it must be of the active transitive sort. 
Doing must go hand-in-hand with believing. In the 
directing mind it is a power no wit can measure ; in 
the individual it is nothing unless he is a type of all his 
fellows. Grant was both type and leader. General 
and soldiers were both wild enthusiasts, whose chief 
strength lay in the fact that they believed. You were 
an atom then, Ben IN'athan, standing shoulder to shoul-> 
der with myriads of other atoms of like tea? per. You 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 131 

willed and did, because of this belief in your collective 
power to do. 

"Even this seemingly impossible victory, however, 
was no such optimistic miracle as you propose. Is it 
possible that you think such a Fourth of July as you 
will see to-morrow can ever constitute the pabulum on 
Tvhich a virile patriotism is likely to thrive ? Under- 
stand me, I am not inclined to complain. I can see 
how^ it hurts you. 

"For myself I do not believe strongly enough in 
either phase of the Puritanic ideal to suffer very acutely 
at the desecration of the day. Theoretically, I admit 
the correctness of your view as to the parity of human 
right, but practically — w^ell, Ben Nathan, you know 
how I feel. If I dwelt in the atmosphere you breathe 
I think I should soon feel as you do. If you were in 
my place you would never feel as I do, I admit, but you 
w^ould be just as weak and helpless in the face of the 
great fact of essential difference. To admit the right 
in the abstract, is one thing ; to reduce it to practice 
in the concrete, quite another. Law matters little 
so long as it remains a dead letter. The real facts lie 
deeper than laws and forms can go. Primal causes 
may have been removed, but effects remain, fixed and 
rooted by generations of divergent growth. 

"It does not hurt me, therefore, to see the serious 
festival, w^ith its flavor of Puritanic cant, changed into 
a day of universal merry-making. In fact, I may say 
it pleases me, for it shows that you people of the J^orth 
are getting, year by year, further and further away 
from the stern, dour, self-depreciating cant of Puritan- 



132 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ism which left its stamp upon your life — in short, that 
you of the E'orth are changing faster than we of the 
South could possibly be changed. I fancy that some 
instinctive appreciation of this fact is at the bottom of 
your curious notion that the Soutliern people are under- 
going a miraculous transformation. It seems to me, 
sometimes, as if you looked upon us as just emerging 
from the chrysalid and anticipated the swift develop- 
ment of angelic pinions on our regenerated essences. 
Why should not you change as well as we? Indeed, 
why should not you change rather than we ? You are 
used to it. You have welcomed the outcast until " the 
uttermost parts of the earth " have spawned upon you 
and well-nigh overwhelmed you. We are not fond of 
strangers. We do not believe in " breeding down." We 
took our dose of old-world scum all at once — took it 
early, and have assimilated it thoroughly. We have a 
race that is almost homogeneous. The Southern man 
is unmistakable and inimitable. ISTo length of resi- 
dence can make the man of foreign or northern birth 
one of us or indistinguishable among us. The white 
people of the South are a real people — one having 
marked and striking characteristics common to them 
all. 

" You of the I^orth are a medley. You have tried 
to assimilate the world's life and lost your own identity. 
You are cosmopolitan in the sense that chowder is 
homogeneous. Its components are infinite, and its 
resultant unlike anything that ever was before. At 
first you Yankee-ized the jetsam of the old world, 
almost the instant that it touched vour shores. Noav, 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 133 

it is doubtful whether the original type will not very 
soon be lost. Already it has ceased to be a controlling 
force in the land. You are hardly past middle age, 
my friend, but you are a type of an almost extinct 
species. If it were put to a vote in the JSTorthern States 
to-day, they would not give the negro the ballot even 
after twenty years of growth and development on his 
part. We of the South are steadfast ; you are the 
changelings. Perchance you will yet come to us as you 
fondly fancy we are now coming to you. 

"But why, in the name of heaven, Ben JN'athan, 
should you get the idea that the Fourth of July — and 
by that I mean your old Fourtli instinct with the sent- 
iment of liberty, equality, and divine right — why should 
you think that tliis common inheritance of freedom and 
glory to be stronger now than it was a quarter of a 
century ago? We had your Fourtli of July, in the ante- 
bellum days, and observed it very much as you did. 
There was, perhaps, not quite so much cant, but in de- 
fault of that I think we had a little more 'buncombe.' 
There was another difference, too. You enlarged upon 
and developed the individual idea embodied in the Decla- 
ration of Independence. We were content to celebrate 
the collective results of the struggle. To the ]S"orthern 
mind, that document became at length the first step in 
a universal revolution for the establishment and equali- 
zation of human rights. To us, it was enough that it 
was the initial step in the establishment of a new sov- 
ereignty. With our steadfastness of purpose and hos- 
tility to innovation we adhered very closely to the 
orig:::.vl idea of our revolution itself. With your in- 



134 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

satiable greed for change and restless desire for im- 
provement, the idea became cmnulative, and the Fourth 
of July came to represent to you the past, present, and 
future of human perfectibility. You twisted, construed 
and added to the florid rhetoric of the ' Declaration ' 
until it contained, or implied, all that you dreamed that 
humanity might sometime possess of liberty, including, 
if I may say so, not a little of license. 

"To you, the new Fourth of July represents a 
broader, nobler freedom and a grander nationality than 
the old one could. But with us — ah, well, our dead — 
dead brothers and still ghastlier hopes — lie heaped be- 
tween us and the old one still ! The Fourth of July 
that is observed in your heart, my friend, must of ne- 
cessity he gall and wormwood — dust and ashes — in the 
mouth of the Southern man for generations. The very 
results which have endeared its sentimenl^ to your ap- 
prehension recall his own humiliation, or still worse, 
his fathers's degradation. I have gone further than 
most of them in self-renunciation. I freely admit that 
you were right and we were wrong ; but I don't care 
to hear the fact proclaimed or know that it is being 
celebrated. I don't mind a Fourth of July made up 
of horse-races and base-ball games, but if we were 
likely to have one of your old-time earnest and intense 
affairs, with Yorktown and Appomattox in the same 
leash, I swear to you, Ben Nathan, I would take the 
next train to Canada and stay until the hot Aveather 
had wilted the patriotism it evoked. 

" Besides that, my friend, you have made the Fourth 
of July especially and essentially a ' niggers' ' day. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 135 

' You don't see how ? ' I suppose not. It is surprising 
how httle plain fact a Yankee can see, when it conflicts 
with his pet theories. Can- 1 you see that 3^our Fourth of 
July is the very apotheosis of individual liberty and 
equality of right ? If the negro hasn't " the first call " in 
the glorification of that idea I would like to know who 
has. Wouldn't I appear to good advantage scraping 
the leading violin in such a demonstration, and leaving 
blind Tom, the black philosopher who weaves baskets 
in my kitchen, to play second fiddle ? I don't " bank on " 
my modesty, as you J^ortbern people claim to do, but 
I can't help admitting that if we have got to have that 
kind of a Fourth of eluly, Tom's place is in the lead. 
lie owes everything to the idea it represents, Avhile I — 
well, honestly, I cannot see what the average white 
man of the South owes it in the line of good-will. My 
children, or grandchildren, if I should have any, may 
possibly be better off — have more enjoyment and a 
truer happiness, I mean — than they would have been 
but for your victory. I don't see how they could, 
though. The fact is, ^ambo has captured the Fourth 
of July. We can't celebrate it with him and it won't 
do to leave him out of its observance. Even 'bun- 
combe' cannot glorify to the negro's face the sacred 
privileges we refuse to allow him to exercise. Don't 
you see, Ben IS'athan, that just as long as your beauti- 
ful theory cannot be reduced to practice, instead of 
acting as an emolient, it is bound to be a most caustic 
irritant ? " 

It does seem. Blower, as if there was something of 
method in the outspoken madness of our Southern 



136 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

friend. Is it possible that right has its vanishing 
point ? Do faith and doubt somewhere become indis- 
tinguishable ? Is it true that the assertion of abstract 
right sometimes becomes, in the concrete, an actual 
wrong ? Is it true that while the colored man rejoices, 
the white man of the South must mourn ? Is freedom 
right, and equality of power the true basis of govern- 
ment ; or is the old-time Fourth of July only calculated 
for higher latitudes and for men with white skins ? I 
cannot answer. Blower, for the truth that Yesterday 
poured forth its blood to establish. To-day counts al- 
most unworthy of consideration. The guns are boom- 
ing for the birth-day! What is the story that they tell ? 
July 3, 1885, 



THE HARMO]^Y OF DISAGEEE- 
MENT. 



"TTTE did not go to Portland, where our brethren of 
V V the Grand Army — our sometime comrades — are 
assembled now in camp, for a variety of reasons, Blower. 
First among them may be noted the fact that we pre- 
ferred the company of one " enemy," as Pascal Eaines 
persists in designating himself, to many friends, and 
the certainties of actual bass to the uncertainties of 
possible salmon. So we still linger by the blue lake 
whose waters yield us day by da}^ the relaxation of fine 
sport and the solitude which two earnest minds make 
populous with contrasted thought. The harmony of 
disagreement still prevails betwixt us, Blower, and we 
not only fight over, at the lunch hour, on the cushion- 
ing grass, beneath the sheltering elms that stand sentry- 
like in the encirchng meadows, or at evening on the 
breezy porch, the battles of yesterday, but mark out 
the lines of to-morrow's conflicts. 

There is no sham about Pascal Eaines. He is one 
of those inconceivable things to the average IN'orthern 
mind — a Southern man who never held an office and 
who has no fancy for a title. He was one of the many 
who did not favor an appeal to arms, believing 
that it would be unsuccessful; but who offered his 
services among the first, because he would not have 

137 



138 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

any one think him a laggard in defending what were 
deemed the rights of his section. He refused prefer- 
ment again and again, and only yielded to the tide of 
proffered honors when imperatively ordered to report 
for duty on the staff of a great leader with desig- 
nated rank. He fully justified the sagacity which 
directed his appointment. He is one of those curious 
combinations of trooper and philosopher which the 
Southern planter life seems only to produce in perfec- 
tion. He Avas of that rare coterie Avhich embrace a 
large portion of the subalterns of the Confederate 
army, who fought the Union forces by day, and at 
niglit discussed with each other the principles and 
theory of Federal government, and mapped out the 
destiny of those twin republics they hoped to see grow 
and prosper on the American continent, one of which 
they were engaged in founding in opposition to the 
demands of the other. 

" For six months," he said the other night, '' I served 
in front of Petersburg on one leg, reading Victor Hugo, 
discussing the Federal Constitution and wondering by 
turns whether it would be ni}^ luck to be hanged or 
shot ; all the time on half rations, in a mud-daubed hut 
just big enough for four men to inhabit horizontally^, 
with the shells flying about us every time you fellows 
got a fit of ill temper — when your mail was behind 
time, or your pork and beans not done to a turn for 
Sunday's breakfast." 

He thinks it was a very dift'erent thing to be a soldier 
of the Confederacy and a supporter of the Union ; and 
I am not sure that he is not right, and that the differ- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 139 

ence continues to this day. What he terms that 
'' curious exhibition of ]S"orthern notions " which called 
for the appointment of two thousand extra police in the 
provincial down-east city where the general encamp- 
ment was to be held, and actually proposed the seizure 
and inspection of every package sent by express to an 
old soldier in the camp, from apprehension that it 
might contain alcoholic stimulants, contrary to ''the 
constitution and the laws of the good State of Maine," 
not only amused him greatly, but moved him to a com- 
parison of the two peoples, especially as regards their 
relations to the men who fought at their behest. 

" You will pardon me, Ben Nathan," he said, as we 
smoked our evening pipes upon the porch, " if I say 
that you Yankees keep me in a constant flutter of alter- 
nate admiration and disgust. Just as soon as I have 
gotten myself well reconciled to the fact that we are of 
the same breed and elected to the same destiny, you 
are sure to do something that seems to me so unmanly 
and contemptible that 1 turn again to the contempla- 
tion of the differences between us and am grateful not 
only for the fate that has made us two peoples, but 
for the unalterable conditions that must forever keep us 
distinct." 

" But are they unalterable ? " I insisted on inquiring, 
in a tone which must have expressed my firm convic- 
tion that they are not. 

"]Srow, my friend," exclaimed he impatiently, 
" what is the use of tr3ang to shirk the inevitable ? It 
took you a long time to get far enough from your early 
notions to recognize the fact that the war was not an 



140 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

accident, nor a move in a political game, but a natural 
and forceful expression of the fact that we had been 
two peoples instead of one — that two antagonistic 
forces, two mutually destructive ideas, had been incar- 
nated in populations curiously like and yet irreconcil- 
ably unlike, within our national limits. You resisted 
ma-nfuUy, but you came to my ground at length on this 
question. At the same time, by some subtle alchemy 
which I can not understand, I found my own ideas 
undergoing a strange transformation. We never said 
much about it, as you know, Ben I^athan. You kindly 
avoided it, from fear of giving offense to me ; and 
I felt no inclination to discuss w4th you the rights and 
wrongs of that social system which was at once a cause 
and consequence of that inherent dissonance between 
the life of the North and of the South. It certainly 
was not argument that undermined my convictions, 
nor do I think it was the result of observation of the 
social and economic system that has succeeded slavery. 
That is yet too rudimentary in its character to form 
the basis of conviction. I believe it must have been 
your personality, Ben Nathan — that indefinable some- 
thing, that indeterminate ether by wdiich one mind 
impresses itself upon another — that produced this 
curious revolution in my thought. 

" Strange as it may seem to you, my belief in what we 
used to term ' Northern fanaticism ' was entirely sincere. 
I do not think even that phrase fully expresses my senti- 
ment. Let me say that I thought this Northern fanati- 
cism, as it was called, was not fanaticism at all, but 
hypocrisy pure and simple. 1 knew, of course, that 



THE VETERAN AND illS PIPE. 141 

there were fanatics — John Brown and men of his tj^pe. 
These men we honestly pitied, believing them to be the 
dupes and victims of others, hypocrites who cared neither 
for liberty nor slavery, but desired strife and were ani- 
mated by envy. Even with you for my friend, Ben 
]^athan — a Yankee whose sincerity I could not doubt, 
and whose candor hid nothing from my scrutiny — it Avas 
Ion O'er than I would care to confess befor^e I realized 
that with you equality of right was a real principle, 
an established conviction, and that you were in fact a 
tvpe of a great element of Northern life. It was then 
that I first began really to respect the people of the 
Korth as a moral force. Before that time I had counted 
the meanest of them as the best — the really half-hearted, 
the insincere who were willing to barter conviction for 
comfort or favor, had seemed to me the real patriots — 
the worthiest element. Then it was that I first began 
to understand the rationale of the war for the Union, 
from the Northern soldier's point of view, and to re- 
spect those whom we had fought, not merely as 
'mighty men of war,' but also as representatives of a 
great idea — soldiers of conscience, and patriots of the 
broadest and noblest motives. 

" About this time my ideas in regard to slavery, the 
war, and almost all that had been at the South, under- 
went a great and curious change. I found myself, 
almost in an instant, looking at slavery, as it were, with 
your Gjes. I not only regretted that it ever existed, but 
stood ready to condemn the theory on which it was 
based. I was Avilling to admit, as Mr. Cable has recent- 
ly admitted, that you of the North were right, and we 



142 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

of the South were wrong. I suppose this conclusion 
was just as much a surprise to the brilliant novelist as 
it was to me, and I have a notion that it was brought 
about in pretty much the same manner — by uncon- 
scious communion with sincere JS'orthern minds. Per- 
haj)s I ought to say by unbiased observation of North- 
ern life. For a long time I was unwilling to give way 
to this feeling, and in seeking to combat it, I first per- 
ceived that inherent difference which you were so loth 
to admit, and which you still persist in believing to be 
characteristic only of a past that may be forgotten. 

" I know that you are wrong because I have an in- 
stinctive knowledge of my own people, and you have 
unconsciously given me the key to the hearts of yours. 
You hope we may become assimilated and homogene- 
ous. I know Ave can not, at least for centuries ; and I 
believe that long before they reach the point where 
assimilation might be possible, if we then stood in sen- 
timent and inclination where we do to-day, the desire 
for homogeneity will have failed, and the differences 
will have crystallized into antagonisms. The trouble 
with you, Ben Nathan, is that you have never been but 
half convinced of the dissimilarity between the two 
populaces. Individually you note it, and perhaps 
wonder at it. My frank confessions of conviction seem 
to you even yet half incredible, because you will persist 
in measuring my thought by your own standard of 
development. Even then, you are compelled to admit 
that there is between us as individuals, a radical, almost 
a structural difference of mental and moral growth. 
You hesitate to extend this rule to the masses of 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 143 

these respective peoples, and yet you know that you and 
I, individually, are infinitely nearer together and 
better able to understand and appreciate each other's 
thought than the average of our respective compatri- 
ots. Twenty years of unrestricted intercourse has 
made us just able to perceive, and perhaps to define the 
difference. What is the real status of my old comrades 
who have no Yankee friend to whom they freely un- 
bosom themselves, or of your ISTorthern philosopher who 
has no recklessly sincere Southern associate to keep him 
from being led astray by his own sentimental specula- 
tions ? We are two peoples, Ben Nathan, let me say it, 
again, and you must make this fact the basis of all 
theories in regard to our future relations, if you expect 
them to be verified by time or crowned with success. 
We are two peoples, and I don't see how we are ever to 
become one. I believe I am just as sorry for it as you, 
but I realize what stands in the way and you do not." 

" ' Slavery separated us and slavery is dead, ' do you 
say?" 

" Don't be a fool, Ben I^athan. If it were slavery that 
separated the two peoples — mind I say if it were — it 
held us apart so long that the difference became congen- 
ital, and if the cause had been entirely removed — mind 
you I say if it had — it would have required generations 
to restore the original identity of character. We speak 
the same language but our words do not mean the same 
things. ' Liberty,' ' slavery,' ' the state,' ' the nation,' 
Hhe rights of man,' 'the privilege of the ballot' — 
these are but a few of the thousand terms that mean 
one thing upon a Southern man's tongue and another 



144 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

in a E'orthern man's ear. ' Slavery,' as /think of it, is 
dead. The slave of my remembrance, is free. But 
slavery, as ?/r?^mean it, is not dead, and the slave whom 
you think that you have liberated, has hardly more of 
what you call freedom than he had before the Federal 
Constitution was made to embrace a guaranty of right 
as false and delusive as the declaration of its preamble, 
was always Ijeld, and no doubt intended to be.- We are 
two peoples, my friend. 

" Only look at the difference in the regard we have 
for those who fought for us. Your soldiers represent a 
successful cause. The nation owes its existence to their 
devotion. The North enjoined on them the defense 
and support of her distinctive theories, not only of gov- 
ernment but of social order, and they performed her 
behest. Victory crowned your banners. Prosperity 
followed on your triumphs, and peace has rested with 
your rusting eagles. All this was reversed with us. The 
Soiithern soldier represents to the Southern people 
defeat, poverty, humiliation. All that you gave your 
people we failed to secure for ours. Yet compare the 
esteem in which ' the blue,' and ' the gray,' are held in 
the contrasted sections to-day. I do not mean how you 
regard ' the blue,' and we regard ' the gray,' abstractly, 
though even that might be an instructive parallel. I 
believe that if Fitzhugh Lee should ride his black stallion 
down Broadway on any public occasion, wearing his old 
slouched hat and soiled Confederate uniform, he would 
get a warmer greeting from the populace than any officer 
of your army excepting only the afflicted veteran on 
Mount McGregor. Reverse the case, and let any Federal 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 14:5 

soldier ride through the streets of New Orleans — our 
commercial metropolis, remember — with Confederate 
commanders preceding and following him. He would 
probably be kindly received. You Yankees would be 
satisfied if he was not actually insulted. Some promi- 
nent men, politicans and officials, might set the 
example, and he thereby, perhaps, receive a scattering 
volley of applause. In that case, every newspaper in 
the North would double-lead and double-ink the an- 
nouncement. But compared with the thunders of 
rapturous approval that would greet even the most un- 
popular of our commanders, the recognition accorded 
'the blue,' would not be worth noticing. 

'' But this is nothing. The comparison has so many 
dissimilar elements that it can hardly be said to prove 
anything. It is only an abstraction, a sentiment, you 
will say at best. Well, take the other line of contrast, 
if you prefer. How is the Federal soldier regarded 
by the Northern people, and the Confederate veteran 
by the Southern populace? We starved our soldiers 
in the field ; you furnished yours with every possible 
luxury. But on the other hand no man's life was 
worth a pin's fee Avith us who wagged his tongue 
against our soldiers or the cause they sustained. 
Invasion developed little groups of malcontents in 
the mountains, and one nest of 'Buffaloes' on the 
seashore. Aside from these, Lee's veterans had 
a united people behind them till the very last 
moment. The South was solid theh, just as it was 
always solid before, and is likely to remain solid here- 
after. Of course, I don't know exactly how it was 



146 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

here at the North. Reports from an enemy's country 
are never entirely reliable. It seems certain, however, 
that there were almost as many people opposed to you in 
the rear as in the front. Such a convention as that held 
by the Democratic party in Chicago in 1864 ^vould have 
been an utter impossibility at the South. There would 
have been no need of troops, arrests or military tribu- 
nals to prevent it. The population of any Southern 
city w^ould have hanged such men before they had time 
to organize. 

" You fed your soldiers as you do your cattle and 
horses, but 3^ou did not support them. You have kept up^ 
the same system ever since, and the same difference still 
exists between the two peoples in this respect. You 
have pensions and homes for your soldiers, aiid schools* 
for their children. You make an advertisement and a 
show of them, just as you do of your paupers. We of 
the South don't do much of this sort of thing. One or 
two States have lately pensioned their disabled Confed- 
erates, and we have made some more or less successful 
efforts to get you ISTorthern people to contribute to the 
support of our veterans. We don't boast of our chari- 
ties, however, and don't feel like putting our soldiers 
exactly on the level of our paupers. But w^hen it 
comes to the question of honors and preferment we 
never forget them. Only think of it ! You were the 
victors and we the vanquished, but there are more Con- 
federate than Federal soldiers in Congress and in office 
under the government to-day ! The whole South is 
officered from the Confederate army. Governors, Con- 
gressmen, Senators, Judges — everybody in official posi- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE 147 

tion south of the Potomac, has the right to sport a 
mihtary title of some sort ; it may be only corporal or 
sergeant — we are not half so great sticklers for rank 
as you think — but it means actual devotion to the 
Confederate cause, and it is for that reason that they 
are preferred. 

"Our people reason of the future from the past. I 
mean the white people, of course. No Southern man 
includes the negro when he speaks of the Southern 
people. Why should we ? They are no more a part of 
our life — there is no more of identity of feeling, im- 
pulse and sentiment between the two races than be- 
tween a Boston blue-blood and a Chinese mandarin. 
They happen to live side by side. That is all. Our 
people say, and they say with reason, too, that the men 
who fought for the South are the most likely to be 
true to her interests now. There has never been a day 
since the war closed that a half-hearted peace-man, or 
one suspected of indifference to the cause of the South 
during the war, could have been chosen to olRce by the 
votes of the white people. As long as we let the 
negroes have their own way such things occasionally 
happened. Even our Mugwumps, however — or the 
nearest approach to the Mugwump that can exist at 
the South — must have been a faithful Confederate m 
order to command a following. Mahone is our worst 
sample, but nobody forgets how he used to ride into 
battle sitting sideways on his horse as cool and inscru- 
table under fire as he is nervous and fussy in the 
Senate." 

" If the Confederacy had succeeded do you suppose 



148 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

that in twenty years it would have elected a President 
who never smelled powder, or even uttered a word in 
support of her cause? Do you think the South 
would have chosen as Yice-President a man whos^ 
public services chiefly consisted in opposition to the 
measures designed to perpetuate its power ? The fact 
is, the South stands by the wearers of 'the gray' 
because they stood by it in its hour of need. The 
North pets and pensions and patronizes and flatters the 
wearers of ' the blue ' as if they had been mercenaries 
hired to fight its battles, rather than representatives of 
its thought and deserving types of its manhood. You 
think you conciliate Southern sentiment not only by 
such an ignoring of the men and ideas of that day, but 
by elevating neutrals to power, and allowing " copper- 
heads " and Confederates to dominate the government. 
By my faith, Ben IN'athan, proud as 1 am of the men 
who have won in peace what we could not win in 
battle, I cannot help blushing with shame for the men 
who permit such things to be. Only think of the 
parade at Portland to-day, and put side by side with it 
the statement of our old fisherman guide. He is almost 
seventy years old, fought through the whole war, and 
said today of the county and district in which he lives : 

" It has always had from three thousand to ^ye thous- 
and Republican majority, yet it has never sent a soldier 
to Congress nor to either branch of the Legislature." 

" I do not doubt that the old man knows whereof 
he speaks, Ben Nathan. Do you suppose that a parallel 
to this could be found in the South ? No, indeed, and 
I thank God for it, too. Are we not two peoples ? 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 149 

You were hardly surprised at the old fisherman's story, 
while I could not help cursing in my heart a people so 
mercenary and ungrateful as to prefer cowards and 
usurers to heroes." 

Somehow, Blower, my friend Raines' furious words 
made the show at Portland seem a mockery which I 
was almost glad to have missed. 

July 10.. 1885. 



''THE HLTET IS IIN" THE HEAET;^ 



" rrr IME is very lavish in the revenge it brings to 
J- him whose soul is strong enough to wait." 
So said our friend Pascal Raines, as he took from 
its place the faded pouch made sacred by the touch of 
love's fingers in the long ago, and pressed the per- 
fumed flakes it held into his pipe. It was a few days 
after the Fourth of July, and I had not yet recovered 
from the shock which the character of its observance 
gave me sufficiently to expect any pleasant message 
from his lips. The truth is, Blower, that his strange 
words, uttered the night before the I^ational holiday, 
had been so literally confirmed by the character of its 
observance — where it was observed at all — that I found 
it impossible to avoid the feeling that his conclusions, 
drawn from the facts he so clearly apprehended, 
might also be true. So I merely said, in response to 
his look of expectation, somewhat brusquely, too, I 
fear: 

'•Well, what now?" 

Pascal Paines paused in his accustomed occupation, 
and looked at me wath wondering eyes. I suppose my 
face must have flushed under his scrutiny, and perhaps 
I moved unconsciously what is left of that arm, the 
major part of which molders back to dust under the 
shadows of the old-field pines. 

150 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 151 

" Does it pain you," he asked in tones of kindly sym- 
pathy, glancing at the empty sleeve. Before I could 
make answer he went on : '' These old wounds are very 
troublesome. I had to lay aside my wooden leg yes- 
terday, and betake myself again to the crutch, as you 
see, for no other reason in the world than that the 
limb that is nd longer there, would persist in 
aching." 

"Yes," I assented, ''but one could endure the evil 
better if he knew that gain had resulted to others from 
his loss." 

'' I see, Ben Nathan," said the fair-faced Southron, 
as he took his pipe from his mouth, and glanced keenly 
down upon me. " It is not the wounded body so much as 
the lacerated heart that wrings your nature past tran- 
quil endurance. I can not say that I wonder at it, but 
you should not quarrel with fate. Because you were 
right once, it does not follow that you always will be. 
I am not sure that it even raises a presumption that 
you will ever be again. I am inclined to think that, as 
a rule, the man who is thoroughly and earnestly right 
upon one subject, can be pretty certainly counted on to 
be wrong on every other. This is even more generally 
true of times and peoples than of individuals. To-day 
may be right in one direction, but to-morrow is almost 
sure to have to rectify its blunders in others. You are 
sore because your old Fourth of July is dead." 

"It is not dead ! " I cried vehemently. " At least 
the spirit, the sentiment of reverent patriotism that 
underlay it, is not dead. You may speculate about it 
as you please, but I still insist that patriotism is the 



152 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

grand passion of the American people, and love of lib- 
erty the very breath of their nostrils.'^ 

"I do not know that I would care to deny your 
words, Ben ]N"athan," he answered after a moment's 
thoughtful pause. " Patriotism, of some sort is sure to 
be an element of American life, simply because it is 
American. The American type of man must grow 
more fixed and assertive year by year. We shall soon 
cease to ask the world's permission to be what we are 
Or what we choose to become. We shall measure our- 
selves, our opportunities, our duties, and our methods 
by our own standards. The unit of comparison will 
be of our own determining. Instead of trying to adapt 
ourselves to the standard by which the lives of other 
lands are measured, we shall become more and more a 
law unto ourselves. Patriotism — in its broadest signifi- 
cance — is nothing more nor less than the assertion of 
national distinctiveness. ' Our country, right or wrong', 
is a very good embodiment of this idea ; and the greater 
the wrong it represents, the more admirable, very 
frequently, seems the patriotism that upholds it. We 
need not go beyond our own experience to exemplify 
this. We have seen the right and the wrong pitted 
against each other ; and can bear witness that the 
patriotism which maintained the wrong is to-day ac- 
counted the equivalent, or, perhaps a little more than 
the equivalent, of that which gave victory to the right. 
Take us two, for example. My wooden leg is a badge 
of honor, recognized and accepted as an indubitable 
certificate of patriotism everywhere. My own people 
applaud the act of which it is a consequence, while yours 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 153 

freely and gladly account it evidence of a sincerity 
which excuses error. Yet it is only a symbol of devotion 
to the wrong — a demonstration of bad judgment or an 
evil purpose. It simply shows that I stuck to what I 
accepted as my country, even when it was grossly and 
palpably in the wrong. 

" On the other hand your empty sleeve shows that 
the heart beneath it beat warm with devotion — not to 
a ' country right or wrong,' but to a country which in 
that struggle was most emphatically right. Yet, in no 
part of the country, is your memento of wars' savagery 
accounted an evidence of a greater or a purer patriot- 
ism than the vacancy which Yankee bullets left among 
my members. My style of patriotism — a mere readi- 
ness to assert and maintain national distinctiveness — 
we shall always have with us. It is not a very rare 
sort of virtue. Tyrants often have it. Even slaves 
sometimes possess it. But what you call patriotism — 
what you meant by the word when you used it just 
now — - is an entirely different thing. Patriotism, to 
your mind, is a curious Janatical adoration of the idea 
of the country — our country, let us say — as the em- 
bodiment of universal equity and benevolence. I 
fought for the Confederacy because it w^as my country, 
or I thought it was. I thought it right, but I should 
have done just the same if I had known it to be \^^ong. 
You sustained the Union cause because vou thoug-ht it 
right. The fact that it was ijour country had very 
little to do with it. In truth, I rather think it 
was a drawback on your zeal. You regarded the 
overthrow of the rebellion as the cause of human 



154 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 

freedom, of universal liberty, a sort of harbinger of 
the millennium. 

" So, too, with your idea of liberty. It does not 
mean collective liberty — national independence, the 
autocracy of the mass — but individual right and per- 
sonal privilege. You have outgrown the original idea 
of our national existence ; or rather, have grafted 
upon it every new phase of aspiration for humanit}^, 
which that vague something you are so fond of calling 
progress, has generated in your kindly enthusiasm. 
Your ideas of liberty and patriotism are so commingled 
and confused that you do not realize that there can be 
such a thing as love of country without the deification 
of right and the consecration of power to the cause 
of universal freedom and equality of privilege." 

I could not deny these things, Blower, though I had 
never thought of them in that way before. I suppose 
my doubt, for I was in doubt, where this speculation 
might lead, must have shown itself in my face, for 
there was a touch of sympathy in Kaines' voice as he 
came over and laid his hand upon my shoulder while he 
continued : 

" I don't mean to be cruel, Ben Nathan, but we 
have been friends long enough to speak plainly, and 
are old enough to look facts in the face without shrink- 
ing. I only speak of things as they appear to my 
apprehension. My point of view is not the same as 
yours, and our ideas ma}^ never quite converge. I may 
be wrong and you may be right, as you were in the old 
time. But if we are ever to find out the right and 
eliminate the wrong, it is necessary that you should 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 155 

know my thought and that I should realize your con- 
viction. And what is true of us as individuals is true 
of all our respective counterparts among our fellow 
citizens. The chief difference between them and us is 
that our mutual reg-ard is a link foro-ed in the white 
heat of deadly strife, which only proved un worthiness 
can ever break. If it is hard for us to understand and 
tolerate each other's notions, even during our few days 
of annual foregathering, how vast must be the chasm 
which separates the peoples of which we are but types 
— a chasm not filled Avith blood nor the ' results of 
Avar,' but the mere neutral distance betAA'een distinct 
and dissimilar crystallizations. 

'' I was in a factory, the other day, and saw tAvo 
smiths grasp each an end of a glowing bar of iron, and 
begin to ply their hammers each on the end nearest 
him. The ends were alike at first. They rested on 
the same anvil, and Av^ere never AvhoUy separated, but in 
a short time the one became crooked and the other 
straight — the one round and the other flat. They were 
parts of a common AAdiole, l)ut if separated each Avould 
still remain in itself complete. Such is our national 
life. It has been shaped Avith different hammers. The 
Avisdom of that ' one matchless among forty millions,' 
as a great Confederate has recently Avritten, Avas based 
on a subtler yet more stubborn truth than he himself 
perceived, Avhen he declared that the Nation 'must be 
all free or all slave.' The forms of society to Avhich he 
referred have been assimilated by the extinction of one 
of them, but the life AA^hich each had shaped remains. 
The slave-shaped civilization — nay, I Avill not say the 



156 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 

slave-shaped civilization, for to do so is but to perpet- 
uate the common error ; let us rather saj that civiliza- 
tion of which slavery was so long a conspicuous 
element — yet remains. It can no more be suddenly 
extir])ated than the people whose every sentiment has 
been molded by its influences. 

All the conditions of that civilization remain, save 
only the one accident of involuntary servitude. It is not 
easily changed because it is, to a great degree, impene- 
trable by external influences, l^early one-third of its 
white population is shut out from all influence which the 
world's thought might exert upon them, by the fact. of 
absolute illiteracy. Practically, not far from one-half 
even of this element of her population, are as safe from 
the contamination of ideas derived from the printed 
page, as if the cabalistic art had never been invented. 
Such people do not change, save by the imperceptible 
attrition of ages. The current of their lives can not 
be broadened or accelerated, except drop by drop. No 
great tributary can join it, no sudden tide overwhelm 
it, because it can neither absorb another life, nor 
readily assimilate itself to new conditions. What it 
was when Lincoln uttered his famous aphorism, it still 
substantially remains, and must remain, until forces 
yet undeveloped, acting upon generations, yet unborn, 
shall either transform or disintegrate and destroy." 

" But this fact is as nothing when compared with 
that one other overwhelming fact of our Southern life 
— the fact that the conditions which in its later years 
induced our best men to believe shavery an absolute 
necessity, still confront us in constantly iilcreasing 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 157 

gravity. The fact that a man is black is nothing to 
you. Upon the average the people living north of the 
Ohio river do not see a black face once a month. To 
us who dwell south of it there is no fact more terrible. 
It is our sphinx which constantly confronts us with the 
unsolved query, " What shall we do with him ? " Per- 
haps we ought more properly to ask what will he do 
with himself, and what can our children do with them- 
selves? You of the North are just beginning to under- 
stand that this is one of the most terrible problems of 
the ages. We of the South have solved it for ourselves, 
and in our own way. We have determined that 
change can not come — sTiall not come ! 

"Do not tell me that this is the old plea which 
slavery put forth for its own preservation. The old 
cry of ' Let us alone ! ' was something more than a mere 
political slogan. It was the instinct and genius of a 
people anxious to avert a danger that has hourly 
grown more imminent and terrible ever since. Your 
ancient Puritan rage for individual right blinded the 
eyes of the people of the N^orth to the fact that we 
acted only from the impulse of self-preservation. The 
South, as a people, does not wish to oppress or injure the 
colored man, either individually or collectively consid- 
ered ; but we stand face to face with the alternative of 
repression or surrender. We must prevent the colored 
man from exercising the power which your humanita- 
rian zeal for the individual and curious disregard of 
the aggregate, bestowed upon him, or yield ourselves 
to his dominion — if not to-day^ certainly in a very near 
future. 



158 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

"We can not assimilate the black man. We can 
not destroy him. Do you wonder that we have deter- 
mined to rule, control, and forever subordinate him? 
Necessity is the highest law. You made it your 
strongest plea for overriding the letter of the Consti- 
tution. It was a good one, too, based on that logic 
which no subtlety can answer. It is beyond even the 
' higher law,' since it is not based on theory, but graven 
on the marble tables of fact, which make up the life of 
to-day. The decision which the South has made upon 
this question rests upon immutable necessity. If it 
conflicts with the formal law you gave us, we can not 
help it. You should have known the life for which 
you legislated, before you sowed to the wind and left 
us to reap the whirlwind ! . 

" Until of late we have feared that the ancient sen- 
timentalism in the IS^orth might give us trouble in the 
future. I confess, Ben Nathan, tliat my fear of this 
was not wholly removed until, with my own eyes, I 
witnessed your Fourth of July. Now I am constrained 
to tell you that there is no ground for apprehension. 
The patriotism and love of liberty which inspired your 
action — ^which make up yom^ ideal of a free country 
worthy of the sacrifice of blood — is no longer an 
active force- among your countrymen, and will not be 
again for some generations. We shall manage the negro 
at the South as we choose, because the impulse of lib- 
eration and amelioration has spent its force, and for 
many years to come will lie dormant. 

" ' How do I know it ? ' ' Out of the abundance of 
the heart the mouth speaketh.' I visited three great 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 159 

cities on tiie Fourtn of July, Ben N^athan. ] saw ban- 
ners and crowds. Curious multitudes flocked in and 
out in a feverish thirst for some new pleasure — some 
untried sensation But nowhere did I hear one word 
of reference to ' Freedom and the Eight.' Since then 
I have noted the reports of the day's observance. 
Here is one from a city of two hundred thousand 
inhabitants — the city from which the President of the 
United States was chosen. 

' There was no assemblage of citizens to . celebrate 
the day, and so far as can be learned the Declaration 
of Independence was not read in the city.' 

" Here is another from a Western City : 

Tor the first time we had a Fourth of July without 
fuss or feathers. There were no parades, no speeches, 
no fire-works, and consequently no fires.' You see, 
Ben ]N'athan, the interests of the insurance companies 
outweigh the impulse of what you call patriotism. 

" To make assurance doubly sure, I sent out one 
hundred letters of inquiry to different towns in various 
Northern States. In hut three of these towns was the 
Declaration of Independence read or the day celebrated 
as a patriotic festival ! 

" One of the answers to n\j inquiries will give you 
an idea of the whole : ' Our people went to picnics, 
base-ball matches, and a circus. A little company who 
might, perhaps, be termed the- elite, had a clam-bake. 
If a word was said about the country or the day by 
any of this company, it was clam et secrete.'' You 
may guess from the flippant jest how far this 
happened from the ' Cradle of Liberty.' Your ancient 



160 THE- VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

patriotism is now accounted worthy only to point a 
classic pun ! 

''Another answers : ' We had flags and firecrackers, 
of course ; a horse-race, a foot-race, and a swimming- 
race. There were no speeches, no assemblage with any 
patriotic purpose, and I heard no allusion to either 
grace or gioiy.' 

" Let me say one word more, Ben I^athan. I trav- 
eled more than a hundred miles that day, and judge 
that I saw somewhere near a half million of 3^our 
Northern people, but I did not hear one syllable of 
patriotic song. I did hear a company of Italians play- 
ing the ' Star Spangled Banner,' followed immediately 
by ' Dixie,' and from a skating-rink at night I heard a 
band playing 'John Brown !' 

" There is no longer any doubt, Ben Nathan, in my 
mind. The spirit of the North will never interfere with 
the Southern idea of necessity, no matter what may be 
the course it takes. We are rid, finally and forever, of 
" Northern interference in Southern affairs." We 
can do with " our niggers " as we like. That is why I 
spoke of time's revenges. We have waited, steadfast 
and unchanging. Where we stood a quarter of a 
century ago, in principle we stand to-day. Our con- 
queror has changed and is changing. After many 
years we see the principle for which we fought — 
the notion that we must be let alone to do as we 
choose with the colored man — if not admitted by 
the North, at least tacitly and willingly allowed. You 
may grieve at the fact, Ben Nathan, but we have noth- 
ing to fear from the spirit of a nation which has prac- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 1(51 

tically abandoned the contemplation of past achieve- 
ments, forgotten its National anthems, and has nothing 
better to do on its birthday than to seek amusement 
practice gluttony, and boast of its wealth." 



July 17, 1885. 



11 



TYPES AND LANDMARKS, 



THIS has been a notable day to the children of the 
little hamlet where we liave fled to escape from 
the summer heats, Blower. All day long the creaking 
monotony of a hand organ's notes have been heard, 
first upon one side and then upon the other, of the lit- 
tle stream which divides the village, with an impar- 
tiality which only the utmost pertinacity could compass. 
All day long the placid bosom of the lake has echoed 
back the ear-afflicting strains, and all day long the vil- 
lage infantry — the rank and file of to-morrow's mighty 
host — have paraded up and down and back and forth, 
as escort for the red-coated quadrumane which served 
as fare-collector for the able-bodied musician who offi- 
ciated at the crank. As the sun neared its setting, the 
storm clouds rose above the horizon, and the thunder 
rolled its magnificent bass among the sun-gilded peaks. 
The vagrant bundled his frightened, jabbering monkey 
under his arm, and fled for shelter just as the first 
great drops fell hissing and bubbling into the troubled 
waters of the lake. 

" I suppose," I said to Pascal Raines, as the black- 
browed Italian went scurrying by, " you may discover 
even in this peripatetic vendor of congealed harmonies, 
another evidence of the radical unlikeness of IS'orthern 
and Southern life." 

162 



THE YETEUAN AND HIS PIPE. 163 

* He smiled good-humorecllj as he watched the 
heavy-laden fugitive, and said : 

"It is at least an evidence of patient forbearance 
and long-suffering on the part of our Southern people 
that they peacefully endure even such representative 
products of your Northern life. They help to give us 
an idea of your population, however, and make us con- 
tent 'to bear the evils that we have rather than fly 
to others that we know not of.' This man is one of the 
standard types from which the average Southern man 
judges the people of the North. The teacher of negro 
schools and the Jewish merchant are two more. He 
takes them all as sample elements and is duly grateful 
that, instead of these, he has only the negro and the 
' poor white ' to vex his soul with insoluble problems. 

''But, seriously, Ben ]^athan, I was just saying to 
myself when you disturbed my reverie, what a pity it 
is that we have not some great national lyric, pulsating 
with thoughts as grand as those for which you fought, 
which might touch a common chord in the hearts of all 
our people — an anthem of the new world's life which 
should fuse and unify its contrasted elements into one 
harmonious whole. I wish we might have a national 
air so potent that it would stir every heart with patri- 
otic impulse, and so popular that no man would dare 
even to carry about a hand-organ that w^s not attuned 
to its harmonies." 

" I am sure," I said, " we have no lack of patriotic 
songs. That we have no anthem of such scope, 
grandeur and originality as you desire is probably 
due, in great part, to the fact that we are not a 



164: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

musical or especially poetical people. We of the North 
would seem to be too busy, and you of the South are 
— I will not say too indolent, though such is the gen- 
eral Northern estimate of your characteristics — but I 
may at least say that you are not given to strong orig- 
inal work, whether in literature, art, or mechanics. I 
suppose that when we reach that stage of artistic devel- 
opment which so many of our esthetic and critical 
friends are sighing for, the land will be so full of har- 
monies that we shall lisp in poetic numbers, and our 
patriotism clothe itself in spontaneous song." 

" It is well enough for you to laugh, Ben Nathan. 
So far as I can see, there is nothing in the near future 
to trouble the Northern man. He has but to laug-h and 
grow rich, if not fat. Indeed, he has grown rich with 
such wonderful ease and in defiance of so many estab- 
lished maxims of the world's precedent life, that he 
has come to scorn all things except the luck he wor- 
ships. I suppose that is one reason why the religious 
element has died out of his political philosophy, and 
his patriotism has come to be merely a struggle for 
spoils, or an endeavor to gain personal advantage from 
public necessity. With us of the South it is different. 
Over Its hangs the sword of Damocles. Turn whatever 
way we may there is danger. Two races confront each 
other on our soil Avho are rapidly approaching parity 
of numbers and theoretical equality of power. They 
stand face to face all over the land. Every roof 
almost, shelters representatives of both. They are 
mingled in every household, and yet separated by 
infinite distance. They differ radically in development, 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 165 

tradition, and aspiration. The one aspires to an equal- 
ity of right and power which the other would rather 
perish than accord. To me the situation seems full of 
peril, but my countrymen laugh at my apprehensions- 
I know that the new-born race has put its foot upon 
the lowest rung of the ladder of development, and no 
power can stay its upward course. My brave compa- 
triots scorn the notion that they must enter the lists 
with those who were yesterday their slaves. 'The 
white man must and will rule the South,' they declare, 
with a confidence which recent history has done very 
much to strengthen. ' If there were a thousand negroes 
to one white man,' said one who but yesterday repre- 
sented one of our states in the National councils, ' it 
must still remain the same. The white man would still 
rule.' 

" You of the North, Ben Nathan, look upon these 
things as cooly as you scan the fluctuations of the mar- 
ket. Southern sentiment, to you, is only whimsical 
gasconade. You laughed at the threat of disunion. It 
took three hundred and seventy -five thousand lives and 
three billion dollars to pay for your foolish levity. 
You mocked at Southern sentiment, and sought to 
thrust the freedman as an actual factor into our polit- 
ical life. We were a conquered people. The flags of a 
victorious enemy were flaunting in our faces. Yet 
to-day we rule the South as undisputedly as when the 
stars and bars floated over our embattled hosts. Nay, 
more, the people whose sentiments your Northern phi- 
losophy has been taught by the predominance of the 
mercenary impulse in your own life, to regard with 



166 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

scorn, impelled by those very sentiments, have won a 
predominance in the National Government which they 
never before enjoyed, which they hold in defiance of 
the principles for which you fought, and which, for a 
score of years, you have foolishly boasted of having 
wrought into the warp and woof of our government. 

" So far as I can see, this does not affect the price 
of a bushel of corn nor the value of a day's work at the 
North. In your present state of mind, therefore, you 
are profoundly indifferent as to the result. Whether 
the nation is wholly republican or partly oligarchical, 
is a question that does not greatly disturb you, as long 
as the political organisms of which you constitute a 
part, are situated in that portion where ihe democratic 
principle prevails. The fervor of devotion to human 
right because of the mere fact of humanity, has pretty 
much burned itself out in your hearts. Your sham en- 
franchisement of the negro has satisfied your vanity 
and allowed you to make easy terms with that 
conscience which once underlay your patriotism. 

" I used to count your fierce humanitarian zeal as sheer 
hypocrisy, as the great majority of my country -men 
believe it to have been to-day. I suppose I should 
have remained of that opinion if it had not been for the 
character of your patriotic songs. They satisfied me 
of your sincerity. I learned from them that your zeal 
for human freedom was something more than a mere 
pretense ; that it was, in fact, a real principle, a 
controlling motive. In the same way, the absence of 
such songs, the unfamiliarity of such ideas among your 
people at the present time, has taught me that what 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 167 

was a motive in the life of yesterday has ceased to be 
more than a false pretense in the tliought of to-day. 
Yesterday the slave's liberty was a cause for which 
thousands of your best were glad to die. To-day the 
freedman's right, on which his liberty, the nation's 
honor, and the future's peace depend, is a subject not 
Avorthy of a moment's consideration by the meanest 
among your number. 

" Why do I apprehend any trouble because of the 
numerical strength of the colored race at the South ? 

" Oh, that has no relation to Northern action or 
sentiment. You will remain utterly apathetic under 
any sort of wrong that may be inflicted" on the negro, 
unless some leader's thwarted ambition should seek to 
make it a battle-cry in some future conflict. This is 
not veiy probable since tlie fruit of such an attempt 
would not be likely to ripen in time for him to gather. 
The soil is not so congenial as it was in j^our young- 
days, and there is no danger that Xorthern greed may 
be shut out of fair western fields by the oppression of 
the negro in South Carolina. No, no, Ben Xathan ; what 
makes it a serious matter, for us primarily and for the 
country secondarily, is not what the Xcrth may see fit 
to do or to attempt on the colored man's behalf, but 
what he may do or attempt to do himself — Avhat he 
may provoke us to do or attempt to do, to maintain 
Avhat we beheve to be not only our right, but an abso- 
lute and imperative necessity. You see, Ben ^N^athan, 
the conditions which surround the two peoples thus 
strangely united, but not in any sense conjoined, are 
not identical nor even similar. It is because I see this 



168 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

SO clearl}^ that I wish we might have a National song 
that should nourish a common sentiment." 

I shook my head with a smile, despite his serious- 
ness and said : 

" I do not think the American people are of so mer- 
curial a- temper as to be brought into harmonious rela- 
tions by ' the concourse of sweet sounds.' You of the 
South, with your more ardent temperament and whim- 
sical ideas of chivalry and honor, may be impressible 
by the minstrel's art. But we of the Nortli are too 
staid and practical — too busy and too cold — to be 
subject in any great degree, to such influences. We 
are neither musical nor sentimental. There is this one 
point in which you might well draw a distinction 
between the two peoples." 

I spoke with the complacency which an utter lack 
of doubt produces. Pascal Eaines looked at me 
for a moment in surprise. Then he threw his long- 
stemmed pipe across the room breaking the bowl into a 
thousand pieces, swung his one leg upon the edge of the 
table, and laughed as I had never heard him in all our 
long acquaintance. 

" Thomas Ben Nathan ! " he cried at length, pant- 
ing still with laughter and wiping away the tears 
it had brought to his eyes. ''You will certainh^ be 
answerable for my death at no distant day ! Is it 
possible that even your eyes are blinded with the 
whimsical tradition that the South is of a lighter, more 
ardent and mercurial temperament than the people of 
the North ? I knew that was the impression of your 
countrymen. It has even been used by your historians 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 169 

to account for certain fancied differences between our 
respective armies. They talk of J^orthern pluck and 
obstinacy and of Southern dash and impetuosity. Bah ! 
If there was any such distinction between the soldiery 
the terms should be reversed. The crowning instance 
of obstinate endurance in the whole conflict was the de- 
fense of Petersburg, on half rations for ten montlis, 
against a force three times as great as our own, and with- 
out the shadow of a hope of success. You who were 
with our opponents — well fed, comfortably housed, and 
lavishly clothed and supplied — you thought that winter's 
task was hard enough. Our old fisherman friend tells us 
almost every day that he has ' never been the same man 
since,' and I do not doubt that he is correct. But what 
would you say if your memory could paint the scenes 
upon the other side of those works ! Clothes, shoes, 
food — we had not enough of anything! Enough, did 
I say ? We only had as little of all as human life could 
be maintained upon ! A hundred times have I seen 
those who stayed in the bombproofs stripped almost to 
nakedness to furnish clothing for those who went upon 
the picket lines! And yet you go on maundering 
about l^orthern pluck and Southern dash, as if obstinate 
endurance was a purely IS^'orthern attribute and fiery 
dash a distinctively Southern characteristic ! " 

" The fact is, Ben E'athan, that you are the light 
mercurial element of our people, and we the staid and 
serious part of the population. You are prattling, tat- 
tling, song-loving, self-complacent sentimentalists. We 
wear the 'inky cloak' of habitual seriousness, if not 
despondency. You are always singing — sense or non- 



170 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

sense, as the case may be. Outside of our religious 
hymnology, which, by the way, has a decided inclina- 
tion to the sad and grave, w^e have hardly anything like 
popular songs. Outside the parlor and the church, it 
may be said, that the white man of the South very 
rarely sings. The negro does our singing and the big- 
ger part of our jollity for us. On the contrary, you of 
the North are always singing. Look at your Presi- 
dential elections ! Think of the thousands who tramped 
all over the North singing the absurdest, most ridicu- 
lous sort of clamatory nonsense ever devised. I saw 
two of the monster ' business men's parades ' in New 
York. Bedlam could not have turned out more ab- 
surdity or more senseless song. The Southern man may 
yell, whoop, perform ridiculous antics, and rival a Com- 
manche in threatening or scornful grimace, but he can- 
not sing, or at least does not and will not sing. You 
of the North are the great song-lovers of the world, 
and always have been." 

It was now my turn to be surprised. I was very in- 
credulous, however, and said almost in derision of his 
idea: 

" Our songs, at least our patriotic songs, must have 
been very poor or have exerted very little influence 
upon the country." 

"On the contrary, Ben Nathan, the patriotic hym- 
nology of the North has been the very best the world 
has ever known, and its influence upon the country's 
history has been simply tremendous. Even in the war 
your songs were of more advantage to you than your 
undoubted superiority in artillery. I could tell you of 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 171 

a scene I witnessed in those days which would perhaps 
make you prize more higlily the songs you have for- 
gotten to teach your children to sing. What was it ? 
Don't ask me. I dislike to think of it. Yet you ought 
to know it, Ben Xathan, you and all 3^our self -deceiving 
generation of sill}^ sentimentalists. You ought to learn 
that your strength as a people is not in money or ma- 
terial achievement, but in that moral purpose which 
differentiates the life of the Xorth from all the other 
peoples of the earth. Yes, I will tell it to you some 
time. But now the storm has passed. A soft, cool 
breeze from the west foretells a quiet morning, smooth 
water and voracious fish. We must be on the lake by 
daylight, 

That I, with wings as swift 

As meditation or the thoughts of love 

May sweep to my revenge ! 

" To-day's ill-luck must be retrieved. The veriest tyro 
can see the signs of the morrow's triumph. We shall 
need steady hands and fresh hearts at dawn. So now 
to bed, to dream of humming reel and glistening scales. 
Some other time I will discourse to you of these things 
of which you have right good reason to be proud." 

July 24, 1885. 



''WITH DEUM-BEAT Al^I) HEAET- 

beat;^ 



YOU must needs pardon me, old friend. I find no 
solace in your charms to-day. For once, your fra- 
grance hath no consolation for ni}^ pain. The soft blue 
billows that rise above your shining bowl are full of sad, 
sweet visions, that bring crow^ding memories of the 
years when we were at the front of life's great battle. 
The salt tears that race down my cheeks make your 
amber mouth-piece bitter to my lips. It is in vain that 
I wipe them away. They only come the faster — 
strange drops of grief which time has treasured for this 
hour of woe. 

One lieth dead whose name brings up the story of 
that past which gilds the brightest pages of the Nation's 
glory. That silent, firm-lipped man whom we first saw 
through the chill morning haze at Donelson ; whose 
look of doo-cred resolution fixed itself forever in our 
memory as he limped past us when we lay waiting the 
surgeon's care at Shiloh ; whose self-forgetful exulta- 
tion showed itself only in a strange brightness of eye 
and lightness of speech, as he led us almost gaily, from 
the river's brink over the deep-gullied hills and scraggy 
oak openings, up to the conquest of Yicksburg — this 
man of men, the foremost of an age when giants 
abounded in our Western world — is dead ! 

So says the world. To us. Blower, the message 
173 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 173 

that clothes the land in mourning is not true. It never 
will be true, because we never can forget. We may 
cease to note the empty sleeve, but the heart above 
which it is folded will never forget the young leader — 
the first to whom we touched visor in the hour of victory. 
We shall remember him always as he looked when 
the sunshine of triumph flashed over his face while he 
watched from Orchard Knob the execution of the 
order that hurled the long blue lines against the slope 
of Mission Ridge, when the prescribed limits of assault 
were overpassed and he beheld a hundred gaily flaunt- 
ing battle-flags, gleaming bright against the gray decliv- 
ity, leap upward in gallant rivalry toward the flame-lit 
crest on which, almost ere one might count their num- 
ber, they were in quick succession planted, while the 
fleeing enemy sought shelter in the circling forest and 
the shadows of the swift descending night. 

A myriad of other memories come back to us — 
memories long accounted precious, sacred now to the 
heroic dead — memories not merely of those great events 
which made up the mighty current of his life, but of 
lesser happenings when our humble fortunes touched 
the orbit of his destiny. How we prize that last me- 
mento of his manfulness and woe, penned with trem- 
bling hand but unfaltering heart, in those last days 
when misfortunes came to show by crucial test the 
temper of his soul. Such memories are for us, Blower, 
too holy for the cold world's eye, too sad for those who 
loved him as he deserved. Dark, indeed, were those 
later days, to them that shared his agony, but rich in 
a golden setting of his fame. 



174 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

He who fought so manfully for others, in that 
wondrous past of Av^hich he was so great a part, has 
gone to swell the ranks of the immortals, with the 
fragrance of heroic fortitude, clinging forever to his • 
name. While he " languishing did hve" we wept in 
sorrow for his pain. Now that he is released, from the 
woes of earth, we still weep — not for him, Blower, but 
for the Nation that has lost the simple minded soldier, 
the brave, true-hearted man, whose worth it only now 
begins to know. His grand achievements, by himself 
so simply told, make the most eloquent eulogium seem 
weak. 

What shall we say of him that others have not 
better said ? The story of his triumphs is his country's 
history in her noblest epoch. 

As a leader he was our greatest because he served 
most self-forget fully. We knew he was with us because 
he was of us. No private in the ranks was more rigor- 
ously observant of discipline ; none so unremittingly 
devoted to duty. He led most successfully because he 
served most zealously. 

His table and his tent were scarce more sumptuous 
than those that fell to our own lot. He abstained from 
luxury, not to encourage his soldiers to do likewise, but 
because he was himself a soldier, and luxury comported 
not with the performance of a soldier's duty. 

He shared the sunshine and the storm, the heat and 
cold, privation and fatigue, not from any vainglorious 
desire to be counted an exemplar, still less with the 
shallow ambition of seeking the favor of those he com- 
manded, but simply because it was a soldier's place, his 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 175 

calling, and his duty, to serve faithfully and endure 
cheerfully. 

He never encountered insubordination because he 
sought only to promote the general welfare. He was 
more anxious for the success of the cause for which he 
fought than greedy of the glory of achievement. 

He never asked more faithful service than he ren- 
dered, and, while chary of blame, never forgot to 
render praise when merited. 

'Not doubtful of his own conclusions he could listen 
patiently to others, and yield his conviction to the con- 
current opinion of trusted subordinates. 

No word of boastfulness ever crossed his lips.- His 
modesty forbade exultation even in the moment of 
victory. No sneer at any rival's ill-success left its stain 
upon his memory. 

' His pity for the unfortunate found expression in 
deeds rather than words. He checked the shoat of 
triumph lest the hearts of the vanquished should be 
wrung by its echo. 

Prizing only achievement as the foundation of fame, 
he never mocked at another's failure. 

Even when he yielded to the advice of others he 
never shirked responsibility of success or failure. H 
success resulted, he never claimed the merit of its sug- 
gestion ; if failure, he never sought to shift the blame 
upon another. 

His self-forgetfulness was so profound that he 
ascribed his own success to opportunity rather than 
merit ; his modesty so great, that the humblest of his 



1Y6 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

subalterns excelled him in exultant pride in the vic- 
tories he achieved. 

He was more jealous of the fame of others than of 
his own renown. To depreciate those who executed 
his commands he counted worse than an affront to 
himself ; slow to repel calumny or insinuation he was 
quick to defend or excuse a subordinate when unjustly 
assailed. 

He had so little envy in his nature that he felt no 
shadow of distrust of those on whose faithfulness he 
relied for success. He never found it necessary to be- 
little their achievement in order to magnify his own, 
nor did he ever seek for exaltation through another's 
downfall. Upon tried subordinates he rested with 
unfaltering faith, even doubting of his own success 
without their aid. 

He never measured his desert by others' merits. 
Accomplished facts were his only criterion of capacity. 
Scrupulous in the performance of duty, he never sought 
to outdo others. His modest reticence put to the 
blush all clamorous exultation. 

As a commander, he was chary of promises of 
victory but rich in the fulfillment of hopes too briglit 
for any but the most sanguine patriot to cherish. He 
never sought to repair the fact of error with excuse, 
nor shirked the responsibility of failure, l^either the 
injustice of a supeiiior nor the slanderous malevolence 
of one apprehensive of his rivalry, could wring from 
him a word that might impair the country's confidence 
in those that led, or add a feather's Aveight to the bur- 
den of responsibility they bore. When the time had 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 177 

passed in which his words might be productive of harm 
he was too magnanimous to cast any imputation on the 
dead. Who else would have rested without protest 
under slanderous aspersion for a score of years ? 

He felt so honored by the country's preference that 
it seemed to him almost a wrong to speak in derogation 
of one who served her well, even in defense of his own 
fame. 

The foremost figure of a mighty conflict, standing 
in the very vortex where envy jostles with renown, he 
felt no jealousy with regard to his own fame, nor any 
desire to pluck a leaf from the chaplet of another. 

Without being indifferent to his own achievements 
he was more scrupulous of the fame of a subordinate 
than of his own. 

So chary was he of censure that the closest friends 
heard no words of detraction from his lips which need 
now be forgotten. 

So pure his purpose that he never deemed it needful 
to utter words of explanation or defense. So faithful 
to his duty that he never sought excuse by alleging 
another's dereliction. 

If we speak of him as a man we but touch the key- 
note of his public life. He was simple, trusting, faith- 
ful, and sincere. Counting his virtues nothing ; seeking 
extenuation for no fault ; accepting fortune with com- 
posure, and meeting the sorest evils without murmur- 
ing. 

Loving his own so unobtrusively as never once to 
think them exalted by his merit. 

So faithful to a friend that even in the heat and 
12 



178 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 

shame of inexcusable betrayal be uttered no word of 
censure, syllabled no reproach. 

Betrayed by those he trusted, he sought no 
revenge and uttered no denunciation. 

Covered with obloquy because of another's wrong, 
he shirked not the reproach attaching to the shame of 
his subordinate. 

When the world echoed with taunt and jeer because 
he had not fathomed almost unfathomable deceit, he 
uttered no cry, thought not of his own, but silently 
addressed himself to the hopeless task of reparation, 
while his great heart was slowly eaten out with grief 
for others' loss. 

So pure was he in heart that his lips never uttered 
a word that might bring a blush to the chastest maiden's 
cheek. 

So unassuring, that he never distrusted words of 
praise. So kindlv in his nature, that he quite forgot 
to vaunt his deeds of charity. So righteous in his 
judgment that the bitterest detraction could not influ- 
ence him to withhold a merited reward. So gentle, that 
the humblest feared not to approach his presence. So 
just, that with him the right of the lowliest was secure 
against the highest. 

So true to those he loved, that he wondered how any 
man could be false. So single-minded, that his adver- 
saries never fathomed his real motives. So heedful of 
the rights of others, as to peril his own through failure 
to assert them. So modest in deportment, that lack of 
ceremony never gave offense. 

Never questioning those he trusted, even to the last 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 179 

lie suffered from a betrayal whose cliiefest sting was 
not his own hardship, but their ill-fortune who, per- 
chance, had trusted in his name and staked their hope 
on his sagacity. 

Even for a friend he would not flex the truth of 
history by a hair's breadth ; nor b}^ his silence do in- 
justice to an enemy. 

So true himself, that he could not suspect another 
of insincerity. 

So simple-minded that the w^orld knew not his 
greatness, least of all the land he loved. 

Ah, Blower, how pathetic — how woeful beyond 
all parallel — is tha't sole sentence of excuse that ever 
fell from his lips in those last sad days, not willingly 
spoken even then, but wrung from his agony by the 
stern mandate of the law : 

" I did not examine the record of what was done, 
and if I had I might not have known the facts. I 
trusted — " 

IN^oblest of leaders ! Manliest of men ! God grant 
his trustfulness hath met reward ! 

So loyal to his country, that he took not to himself 
one sentence of the world's unmeasured adulation. 

'' This is not for me," he ever declared, while the 
world's acclaim echoed in his ears, ''but for the land I 
love, the reflection of whose glory shines upon my 
hfe." 

^ There were two themes that broke the silence which 
modesty pressed upon his lips, made his eye flash, his 
cheek flush, and his voice grow eloquent — the reverence 
which the world has for the great Eepublic, how it 



180 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

stands for the hope and aspiration of the poor and weak 
of all the earth, and the patriotism, fortitude, and de- 
votion of those improvised armies, whose units leaped 
with joyful readiness from the quiet of peaceful homes 
to the forefront of relentless war. To them he was 
w^ont to ascribe all his fame and all the happiness that 
had fallen to his lot. 

He loved the land he served, so well that devotion 
to her welfare was a sure passport to his approval — to 
have suffered for her, an all-sufficient claim, not merely 
to his pity, but to his reverent regard. 

Never vaunting liis o^Yn patriotism or self-sacrifice, 
he A^alued W'hat he had done simply for the good 
which his country and humanity might derive there- 
from. He accounted his achievements worthy of recog- 
nition and remembrance, not because of their great- 
ness or brilliancy, but because of hoped-for beneficent 
results. 

The agony that ended on Mount McGregor was not 
endured in vain. Even the last sad days yielded worthy 
fruits. Glorious as is the record of his prime, the story of 
these closing days outshines it all ! The valor w^hich he 
displayed upon the field of battle shows dim beside the 
heroic fortitude with which he held the grisly shade 
at bay, w^iile with trembling hand he w^rought upon 
his self-appointed task! There is no grander figure in 
history than this decrepid hero, working day by day at 
a self -delineation as unassuming as the life it portrayed, 
that he might vindicate his fame and leave a comfort- 
able inheritance to his loved ones. While we mourn his 
loss let us rejoice in this fitting climax of a career w^hich 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 181 

has enriched the ages with a bright example that will 
be all the more potent because of this simple soldier's 
story of a simple soldier's life ! 

He was of the past which the ]N'ation is striving so 
earnestly to forget — a past which he had already 
outlived. The thought that inspired the armies he 
led to victor}^, no longer swaj^s the hearts of our people. 
The IN'ation exults in forgetfulness, as if yictoYj had 
been the badge of shame, and triumph a confession of 
wrong. He was proud of his leadership in war, not 
because he had slain or conquered, but because through 
him the right had triumphed and ultimate good 
been attained. He exulted in the E'ation's glory, not 
merely because its light fell on his face, but because he 
beUeved it a beacon whose rays invited the world on- 
ward and upward. 

The study of the epoch of his fame has been so 
persistently deprecated by his countrj^men that the 
memory of his great deeds has sunk into oblivion 
almost as dense as if ages rolled between us and 
them. The school-boy of to-day knows all about 
the heroes of antiquity, but of Grant he has learned 
little more than the story of his heroic fight with 
death. The victories he won are less familiar to his 
young countrymen than those of a hundred years 
ago. The struggle which he brought to a glori- 
ous end is remembered onh^ as a great misfortune. 
A reunited country makes haste to forget the means of 
its salvation. They who sought to overthrow are 
honored above those who fought to save. The JN'ation's 
flag that floated brightly over Appomattox, droops as 



182 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

low in honor of one who sought to destroy as in mem- 
ory of him who fought to preserve. 

Whether Grant was right or Lee was wrong is 
accounted not merely an irrelevant, but an imperti- 
nent incpiiry. It matters not, we are taught to-day, on 
which side lay the right of yesterday. Indeed, it is 
deemed by far the better form to believe that the right 
was not upon either side, but somewhere between, or 
else, perchance, hi nuljibiis. We are taught that charity 
demands forgetfulness, and that wisdom counsels, not 
forgetfulness merely, but even justification of the Na- 
tion's foes. To-day, the accepted theory of the great 
convulsion from the throes of which the hero sprung 
whose death we mourn, is that the Nation was but half 
right at the best, and revolution but half wrong at the 
worst. Slavery we are told, Avas indeed an evil ; but 
the negro was only half entitled to be free. The rights 
of men, they would have us believe, are only myths 
and "the rights of things" alone are real. It was, 
perhaps, well enough to take off the shackles, but 
radically wrong — so the wisdom of to-day declares 
— to confer the rights of citizenship. So the balance 
is struck. Treason stands uncondemned, while its 
overthrow is scarce half-justified. The hero sinks 
to rest, his laurels already half -withered by the frosts of 
forgetfulness while the traitor from his dying bed "^ be- 

*A few weeks before the death of Gen. Grant, the flag was placed at 
half-mast on the buildings of the Department of the Interior at Washington 
as a tribute of national regard for Jacob H . Thompson, who was the secre- 
tary of that department under Mr. Buchanan, and was afterwards the Con- 
federate agent sent to Canada for the express purpose of promoting riot, 
arson and seci-et treasonable oi-ganization throughout the North. He was 
not a leader in honorable warfare, but the instrument \>j which thieves and 



THE VETERAN AND flIS PIPE. 183 

holds the I*^ation's flag lowered in honor of his treason ! 
In a little while, no doubt, the line will be obliterated ; 
and those who wore " the blue " and those that donned 
" the gray," will be thought to have been equal trans- 
gressors, or perhaps with loving flattery they will greet 
each other as equally deserving patriots! It is well 
that he who died did not tarry with us until that day 
had fully come ! 

Now the old battle-flags will be brought forth and 
the bowed and the sorrowing veterans will march in 
sad procession to the tomb. The very cannon which 
he captured will from their smoking throats proclaim 
his apotheosis. Had he lived a little longer it might 
even have happened that the tattered fragments of 
the standards which he had watched tossing above 
the wave of battle — telling how the conflict ebbed 
and flowed — had been thought to smack too strongly 
of unpleasant memories to be displayed in honor of 
their captor ! 

The I^ation will do honor to the illustrious dead, 
because his renown has added to its glory ; yet under- 
neath the show of sorrow there will be a sentiment very 
close akin to relief. The new life buries in his grave a 
potent reminder of the old. Other nations saw him 
from afar and offered tribute to his grand simplicity. 
Only we, who claimed him for our own, mocked his 
rare modesty and rewarded his devotion with disparage- 
ment and contumely. 

murderers were employed in the service of treason ! He was one who con- 
spired with criminals, inciting- them with the lust of plunder to the commis- 
sion of private crime in order that the Nation might be weakened and the 
hopes of the Confederacy strengthened. 



184 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 

Thank God, Blower, the swift approach of death 
stirred the Nation to a tardy justice ; and, in name at 
least, saved us from the shame that seemed impending. 
To-day gives not the meed of fullest approval to the 
man of yesterday. The rugged steel of heroic achieve- 
ment attracts its fancy not so much as the gilded glitter 
of pretense. Gold is its sole standard of value. The 
Nation's heart is kept under seal in the time-lock 
vaults of the Treasury. Polish rather than strength, 
is the gauge of excellence. The power to forget is 
deemed the highest test of patriotism. 

Let us not murmur. Blower, the blame is not alto- 
gether with to-day. The faults of the tree are found 
first in the kernel. If questions of right and wrong 
have little place in the ])olitical ethics of the present, it 
must be because yesterda}^, with all its glory and all 
its heroism, was somehow unfaithful to its trust. The 
seeds of evil lie a long while dormant, but " in fullness 
of time their ripe fruits must abound." The hero who 
journeys to his tomb to-day will only receive his full 
meed of honor in some far future, when the American 
people shall have more fully learned the lesson of the 
struggle in which he led them on to victory. They will 
only realize the debt they owe to his genius, manhood, 
and determined purpose, when they comprehend the 
fact that truth is not the question of an hour or right- 
eousness a matter of a day. He was a hero, not because 
he fought well, but because he led to victory the hosts 
marshaled in support of right. We may pity arxd for- 
give the foe. We may regret that brave men should 
have erred. We may restore to every privilege those 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 185 

who have transgressed. But we can not blot out the 
fact — the one great, overwhehnifig fact — that their 
acts were evil ; that the cause for which they fought 
was the degradation of humanity, and that which he 
maintained, its great uplifting ! 

To-day we are in the trough of that great wave of 
conscience that yesterday swept over the land. 

Men say it was a stolen tide ; 
The Lord, who sent it, He knows all. 

We have accounted it an accident. It was in truth 
a moral consequence. We have declared the great 
questions of yesterday and their logical resultant to be 
outside of the domain of politics. We have insisted upon 
making that an exception which ought ever to be the 
rule. We have sought to limit political issues in the 
Republic to questions of finance and administration. 
We have thrust human right from off the pedestal of 
aspiration and lifted up instead a golden image. We 
have bidden our children worship peace, rather than 
righteousness ; cunning rather than courage ; gain 
rather than greatness ! 

It was a grievous fault, 
And grievously hath Caesar answered it. 

Our hero goeth to his grave, his fame clouded only 
by its malignant shadow. 

A nation mourns sincerely enough, but still wonder- 
ingly. Our comrades, Blower, grown old and gray, 
speak of him in choking tones, with tearful eyes. They 
mourn not the man only — not merely the hero-leader 
— but the life, the inspiration which he represented. 
They feel that we cast with him into the grave 



186 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

tliat thought which made the epoch by which his active 
Hfe was bounded, the most notable in the world's 
history. They have lost something more than a com- 
rade. To their stricken hearts it seems that the most 
noted land-mark of a mighty epoch has disappeared. 
To them, the rebellion (if the word is not taboo) was 
even more striking in its moral and intellectual aspects 
than in its physical manifestations. To those who 
stand beside them, the young whose memories barely 
overlap his glory's brightest zone, the conflict in which 
his laurels were won is only a struggle of man with 
man for power — of beast with beast for mastery. They 
rejoice in his fame as in the memory of a soldier who 
won victories which have reflected credit on our nation- 
al prowess. What those victories mean, why those 
battles were fought, they only vaguely guess and dimly 
care. Their fathers in their zeal to guard against 
hatred and malice enjoined the duty of forgetfulness 
so effectively, that the hero's deeds are half forgotten, 
and the hero's cause so lost in oblivion, that his funeral 
eulogium falls upon wondering ears like the story of 
some long dead and unrelated past. 

To those who clamber about our knees, Blower, the 
little ones whose wondering eyes will fall upon the 
pageant of to-day, in whose ears the booming of the 
funeral guns will live as sad sweet memories when age 
shall have touched their locks with gray and time 
shall have taught them by harsh tutelage who 
and what he really was whose earthly form we now 
consign to dust — to them it will be given to measure 
arig-ht his greatness and to ascribe to him his true place 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 187 

in the temple of fame. To them, the fact that he 
saved the nation from dismemberment will mean more 
than to us, for they will have learned from what fate, 
and for what glorious destiny, it was preserved. 

So long as men shall love liberty and hate oppres- 
sion ; so long as there shall be on earth one man to 
whom memory or tradition brings the story of the 
slave's sad fate ; so long as there shall be one earnest 
lover of his fellow's right whose cheek flushes with 
shame and anger at the story of unrighted wrong ; so 
long as any human soul looks up to God out of the 
sanctuary of an ebon form ; so long as the boundary of 
equal right and privilege is marked and determined in 
the least degree by the color of the freeman's skin ; so 
long as earthly pen shall write or human eye shall read 
the story of our yesterday^ — so long the name of Ulys- 
ses S. Grant v,all be held in loving and grateful remem- 
brance by those to whom it is given by divine ordain- 
ment to confer the highest fame — the weak and poor 
of earth, to whom liberty is not an empty form of 
words, but the golden gate of opportunity — the very 
open door of heaven! 

We Avill wear the badge of mourning, Blower. The 
empty sleeve shall bear for many a day the emblem of 
bereavement. But we will not count him dead. Our 
Grant, the patient, modest, brave — the type and pro- 
duct of our new-world life — can never die ! 

The stars on our banner grow suddenly dim, 
Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for liim ; 
Not for him, who departing left millions in tears ; 
Not for him, who has died full of honors and years ; 
Not for him, who ascended Fame's ladder so high — 

From the round at the top he has stepped to the sk^^ ! 
July 31, 1885, 



THE EEFLECTED LIGHT OF FAME. 



SLOWLY the pageantry of death proceeds on Mount 
McGregor. The great leader is borne to his last 
resting-place. Flags droop above his bier. Mourning 
emblems line his last triumphal course. Cities and 
states contend for the honor of sheltering his remains. 
They who spurned him living, covet the privilege of 
shining in the reflected light of his renown. The 
Illation's capital city — a capital only in name, where 
but the shreds and fragments of national life are to be 
found — clamors angrily because the hero's tomb is not 
to be added to that national museum, by the exhibition 
of which those multitudes of strangers are lured within 
its limits, to become the lawful prey of its inhabitants. 
Day by day we have watched the course of prepara- 
tion, and day by day we have talked of the dead hero 
and of the time when his fame was won, with that 
friend who stood then upon the other side. The 
sword we wore at Shiloh and at Yicksburg hangs 
draped upon the silent wall at home, where one whose 
shackles the great hero did so much to unloose forgets 
not to do tender homage to his memory. 

For us old soldiers even the pleasant summer sports 
have lost their charm. Rod and line have been idle 
since the day the hero died. Our old fisherman com- 
rade has no heart for the oar, and the rippling waters 

188 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. • 189 

of the fair lake have wooed us hourly, but in vain. 
It is amazing, Blower, how universal is the feeling, 
that with him we bury the spirit and aspiration of 
that wondrous day when he sprang from obscurity to 
fame. Even Pascal Eaines, despite his cynicism and 
the fact which he cannot ignore and will not deny, 
that to applaud the patriotism and devotion of Grant, 
is to admit his own error and certify his own shame, 
even he has been depressed and restless during the 
whole week, while the dead has waited for the country 
to prepare the elegiac pomp, which will attend its 
greatest soldier's obsequies. We have smoked our 
pipes together, half -unconscious of the solace Ave de- 
rived therefrom; scanned the maps of old familiar 
fields ; followed the routes of advancing and retreating 
armies ; and by the aid of many a printed page, have 
tried to revivify the past and reawaken in our hearts 
the thrill of its great impulses. 

'' Do you know, Ben IN'athan," said our friend, as 
we sat -together looking out upon the flashing waters 
of the noble bay, after we had read the daily record of 
the world's adulation for the dead, "that I feel as if 
our day was to be buried in his tomb ? The pomp and 
pageantry that will attend his interment seem to me 
almost a mockery of his devotion. I never saw him 
but once in that climateric era of his renown. It was 
just after he had received the surrender of Lee, when, 
still splashed and grimed with the stains of that furious 
campaign, clad still in the simple dress hardly distin- 
guishable from a private's uniform, he had started 
back from the scene of his greatest triumph, not wait- 



190 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ing to view the smoking ruins of the fallen capital, nor 
enjoy the plaudits of his fellow-citizens, but desirous 
only of completing the mighty task intrusted to his 
hands, and seeking again the bosom of the family he 
loved. As the little cavalcade passed by us, I scanned 
curiously the firm placid countenance of the chief. 
There was not a trace of exultation in it — only com- 
plete absorption in the new duties that confronted him. 
They drew rein at a roadside spring to rest the horses, 
which were being pressed as if the exigencies of a new 
campaign were already spurring him to renewed 
activity. There were some officers of rank accom- 
panying him — one a General who was among the 
most trusted of his subordinates. These with a few 
orderlies and the members of his staff constituted his 
sole escort. Quite a little company of loiterers had 
gathered at the old country tavern — soldiers in blue 
from a camp near by and footsore Confederates on 
their w^ay home, if happily war had left them any 
homes. A train of ambulances under the charge of an 
assistant surgeon had halted there the night before, 
and were still waiting for the roads to be cleared 
before them. Trains were passing constantly carry- 
ing rations to the victorious army and the prison- 
ers they had taken. I was in one of the ambulances, 
not very badly wounded, though one of your shells had 
taken away at once both the artificial limb on which 
I had served for more than a year and the horse I rode, 
leaving me, as the Yankee surgeon jocosely said, one 
of the "worst disabled" men in his care. I think his 
jest secured me a place in that ambulance and a free 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 191 

ricle back to the verge of the world's life on the James. 
I have always missed that leg. It was of French 
make, and when I first reported for duty on it my 
commanding officer regarded me very dubiously for 
a moment, and said : 

" ' Do you think it will stand the wear and tear of a 
long march ? ' 

'''Oh, I reckon so,' I replied; 'it has already run 
the blockade.' 

" He laughed, and let me have my old place, and 
the wooden limb was no very serious inconvenience 
until Sheridan's artillery took it off rather uncere- 
moniously. The stump has never been in good con- 
dition since. I understand now something of a sailor's 
dread of splinters in time of battle. 

'' A group of children were playing in a wrecked 
army-wagon by the roadside. Among them a fair-haired 
little girl. Alighting from his horse, the great captain 
surveyed the surroundings with a look which one felt 
included everything. Then lighting a fresh cigar, he 
strolled over to a house across the way, addressed a few 
words to the wife of the owner, who sat upon the porch 
bewailing the losses she had suffered at the hands of 
both armies, and inquiring anxiously as to her hus- 
band's fate, who, she had learned was still with his 
command in Lee's army only a few days before the 
surrender. Of course, his non-appearance filled her 
with alarm. The General spoke a few words of conso- 
lation and then strolled over to the old wagon, which 
the children had converted into a play-house. When 
called to partake of the simple repast which had 



192 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

been hastil}^ spread for him, the great Captain led 
the httle girl over to the grove, listening gravely 
to her prattle about the scenes which had recently 
been enacted before her wondering eyes. There was 
some laughter when he and his queer companion 
reached the group around the spring, but he only 
patted the child's head and said something I could 
not hear which hushed the levity of his companions. 
A servant had placed a red blanket at the foot of 
an oak tree for the General's accommodation. This 
he half unfolded and gravely seated the child beside 
him. I left them sitting there, the child partaking 
of the conqueror's modest repast. 

" I was in a state of chronic hunger then, Ben 
J^athan. The two days' rations we had received from 
your commissary the day before had lasted me about 
half as long as they would a raw recruit on a hard 
march. I had hardly eaten before for a week, and 
such a thing as a full meal was almost beyond the 
verge of my recollection. I did not know where the 
next meal would come from nor when it would arrive. 
I was still a prisoner. Having been captured before 
the final surrender, it was yet doubtful whether its 
terms would be extended to those in my condition. 1 
think, however, that sight did me more good then 
the richest repast that even the lavish abundance 
of Yankeeland could have afforded. I never saw your 
dead commander again ; but I heard afterward that his 
kindness to the little girl did not end with sharing his 
luncheon with her. 

" Of course I can not share vour sorrow in his 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 193 

death. I admire his strength, courage, and devotion 
to the principles fpr which he fought. The world 
must always do reverence to his modesty, simplicity, 
and purity of character. He no doubt saved his coun- 
try as surely in the Presidential chair as on the battle- 
field. If any weaker man — any one whose relentless 
resolution we of the south had not learned so thor- 
oughly — had been at the head of your National affairs 
during the troubled years of reconstruction the horrors 
of the strife which culminated at Appomattox would 
have been multiplied a thousand fold. Even as it is, 
you are appalled by the bare recital of the terrible 
facts of that era. The'tliirteen thick volumes crowded 
with the testimony of murder, mutilation, and univer- 
sal terror are a terrible arraignment of our civilization, 
and yet they tell but a tithe of the horrors of that in- 
scrutable day ! Thank heaven ! they are now ex- 
ceedingly rare. It is charged that our Democratic 
Congressmen swapped and bartered with their thrifty 
Eepublican associates until they obtained nearly all 
the volumes that were printed and condemned them to 
destruction. I do not know how that may be, but I 
wish they had secured the ver}^ last one, so as to have 
obliterated from the record all memory of that shame- 
ful time. But that is neither here nor there. What I 
wish to call your attention to, is the simple inquiry : 
If, despite the prestige of Grant's name, that terrible 
epidemic of crime and violence which is called Kuklux- 
ism left its fearful scar upon our civilization, what 
might not have happened had a weaker hand held Ihe 
reins of power ? 
13 



194 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

" The south will mourn in him a brave soldier and 
a generous foe — one to whose masterly genius and un- 
flinching persistency it was no discredit to yield, and 
whose modesty and thoughtful consideration did all 
that lay in his power to sweeten the bitter draught, a 
soldier's duty compelled him to press to our lips. It 
is the man, however, and not the representative of a 
cause or the exponent of a principle that we mourn. 
The death of Grant does not in any degree change or 
modify our views of the past, the present or the future. 
We are simply paying in kind a debt we owe to him, 
individually, as ex-Confederates. He was magnani- 
mous to us in the last hours of that fond dream which 
had so sad an ending. We would be cravens indeed 
if we did not remember this, and weave a chaplet for 
his bier. His fame brings up the memory of our 
humiliation, but in the presence of death we can 
afford to be magnanimous. For myself, individually, 
I can honestly say that I mourn him as an upholder of 
a righteous cause, a true principle, Avho has suffered 
cruel wrong at the hands of those who owed to him so 
much. I believe that time will bring his justification 
as a statesman, as well as continue to increase his fame 
as a soldier. 

" It is strange to remember how bitterly he was 
attacked for merely proposing as a measure of national 
defense the acquisition of San Domingo. Already the 
necessity of interfering in the affairs of Central 
America has verified the wisdom of his forecast ; and 
we are beginning to look forward with complacency 
to the prospect of relations affecting isthmian transit 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 195 

which may at any time involve us in foreign war and 
render such an outwork as he sought thus to obtain, 
of incalculable value. 

" So, too, with regard to his recommendation for a 
limitation of the elective franchise in the choice of 
Federal officers. Then, it seemed little less than 
treason to the principles the IS'orth had fought to 
maintain. T^ow, the chief opposition to an educational 
qualification would come from the South. We have 
changed places wonderfully in the whirligig of time, 
Ben IN'athan, and I sometimes wonder if the future 
does not hold for us as many surprises of this sort as 
the past. 

" I have told you often that he reminded me very 
much of that dead hero whom the South has shrined 
above all other sainted memories in its heart of hearts 
— ' Stonewall ' Jackson. In modesty, determination, 
and unwavering confidence in the result of the con- 
flict, they were alike. Jackson never doubted the suc- 
cess of the Confederacy ; Grant never questioned its 
ultimate collapse. Both were at the same time singu- 
larly reticent and 3^et singularly outspoken. Both had 
the instinct of the great commander, which sees only 
the beginning and the end — the great objective and 
the first step toward its attainment — leaving all the 
intermediate moveanents to be determined by the 
events of the conflict. Neither excelled as a subordi- 
nate, though one was a martinet and the other negli- 
gent of everything but the essentials of soldierly con- 
duct. E'either had any genius for defensive strategy, 
nor any hesitation about assuming the offensive. The 



196 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

campaign of the one in the valley of the Shenandoah 
is equaled only in our history by that marvelous suc- 
cession of victories by which the other compelled the 
surrender of Yicksburg. They were alike, too, in their 
restless activity — the success of one blow only revealed 
to them a way to more successfully deliver the next. 

" More and more I have come of late to regard them 
as types of their respective sections rather than others 
more generally regarded as true exemplars of the 
respective peoples. In one respect each differed very 
greatly from the majority of their compeers. Grant 
did not believe that the overthrow of the Confederacy 
removed forever all national peril, or even the 
possibility of civil convulsion. I have reason to 
believe, Ben ^Rathan, that his a23prehension of future 
conflict between different elements of our population, 
grew more intense and positive during his later years, 
and was only dispelled in his last days by those mes- 
sages of condolence and sympathy from the South 
which he accepted, as he did the honors showered upon 
him by other nations, in a representative capacity, and 
counted as indications of concurrence on the part of 
the South in the principles for which he had fought 
and the social and political order which his sword had 
established. He had an unwavering confidence in the 
destiny of the great Republic. He looked forward to 
a homogeneous people, among whom there should be 
no difference of interest — no ^orth no South, no East, 
no West, save in geographical relation. Of this he found 
little evidence until a divine pity for his sufferings im- 
pelled so many of our people to express a sympathy, 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 197 

which his self -forgetful modesty impelled him to con- 
strue into a declaration of allegiance to the principles 
and ideas of which he counted himself only the insig- 
nificant agent and representative. 

" Singularly enough, ' Stonewall' Jackson had a like 
confidence in the converse of this idea — the destiny of 
ultimate separation. 

" ■ This is our country/ he said to me one evening as 
we lay upon the banks of the Potomac, waiting to cross 
over into Maryland in the morning. I had visited his 
quarters in my capacity as a staff officer to convey to 
him the last orders of his superior before the move- 
ment began. I found him poring over a map of the 
region we were about to enter, and the nature of the 
communication I brought made it necessary to continue 
its inspection. It was a hot day in the early autumn, 
but his military coat was buttoned closely about his 
curiously angular form. His sword was on the table, 
and during our whole conversation he never once re- 
laxed that peculiar rigidity of figure which he seemed 
to consider inseparable from the military profession. 
^TMs is our country^ he repeated more slowly and em- 
phatically as he swept his finger along the crest of the 
Alleghanies, in such a manner as to include Baltimore, 
and then carried it westward along the Ohio. ' This is 
our country. We are not invading an enemy's terri- 
tory for the sake of conquest, or to keep him from 
overrunning ours. We are simply taking our own.' 

" ' The man in Washington,' he continued, for it was 
by this circumlocution that he always referred to Mr. 
Lincclxi, 'asserts that the territory claimed by the 



198 THE YETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

United States is destined to be one country, because 
there are no natural geographical boundaries separating 
its component parts. Does he count this line of moun- 
tain and river, stretching from the sea to the Mississippi, 
no natural boundary ? But even if he does not, there 
is a boundary, Captain, a thousand times more insup- 
arable than this. JS'ations are not really separated by 
mountains and rivers. These, in fact, serve to mark 
the line of agreement rather than demarkation. They 
are only the convenient evidence of convention. They 
are lines that may be so easily traced as to make mis- 
take on the part of adjacent governments inex- 
cusable. Natural obstacles are simply strategic lines 
between hostile forces. They may preserve nations 
from attack, or give them specific advantages for de- 
fense, but they never differentiate peoples. Peoples 
are separated not by boundaries, but by attributes and 
characteristics. We are two peoples, as distinct and 
irreconcilable in character as if an ocean rolled be- 
tween. The mistake of the North consists in not rec- 
ognizing this fact and letting us go in peace. Neither 
force nor time can make us one. Habits of thought, 
social customs, even the very constitution of our lives, 
mark us as distinct and separate. The results of this 
conflict can not change these facts. There must be 
two peoples and one republic or two peoples and two 
republics. I hold that in the interests of peace, hu- 
manit}^, and the future progress of mankind, it is better 
that there should be two harmonious nationalities 
rather than one weak and discordant one — subject at 
any time to the terrors of threatened dismemberment. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 199 

" ' That is why I am here, young man,' he continued. 
^ I do not know much about the formal right or wrong 
of the matter according to the convention by which we 
were bound together — the Constitution. But I tliink 
God has written his decree in the natures of tiie two 
peoples and we are now working it out. We may not 
succeed. I sometimes think we shall not. Those who 
control our armies do not seem to realize these things 
very clearly. They seem afraid to declare the 
truth. They cling to slavery. It is at best only an 
accident, but they dare not even make it serviceable to 
our cause. I do not see how it can long outlast this 
war, whatever the result — and I would give every one 
his freedom who would bear arms against the enemy. 
They would not make such soldiers as we have, but 
they are good enough to face the mercenaries who 
swarm like locusts in our front. Of course they have 
got to be free some time, but that fact will not change 
our identity as a people, nor assimilate us in any great 
degree with the l^orth. 

" ^ Ko Captain,' he repeated again impressively, 
'this is oior country. All this,' sweeping his hand 
southward from the southern edge of Pennsylvania, 
'must sometime be a great Southern republic. It 
will include these islands too,' pointing to the West In- 
dies, ' and these jarring nationalities down to where the 
Isthmus merely parts the eastern and western strands 
all will some time be one nationality, homogene- 
ous in its interests, and the underlying character- 
istics of its people, at peace with its sister republic of 
the North, its flag on every sea, and its ambassador in 



200 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

every court. We may not live to see it, Captain, but 
it will come, because it is written by God's hand in the 
hearts of two great peoples. We may not live to 
see it,' he repeated, looking up at me with that 
peculiar earnestness of gaze which characterized him, 
' but when it comes, whether it be during the next yeai 
or the next century, the world will do justice to our 
memory. The Deo vindice upon our flag is not a vain 
appeal. God will vindicate the truth he has revealed. 
It may not be in our way and time, but His truth can 
not fail.' 

" He bowed his head in reverence as he spoke, then 
walked abstractedly across the room once or twice. I 
waited for my dismissal, but seeing he had forgotten 
my presence, at length accosted him. He became at 
once the alert and impatient soldier, repeating again 
the message I was to carry back to headquarters. As I 
took my leave he said, '- You must pardon me, Captain, 
I rarely speak of these things, but the shadow of these 
Maryland Heights always ' puts toys of desperation ' in 
my mind. Good night.' 

'' I shook hands and rode away dazed and astounded 
with what I had heard from the lips of our ' silent 
man.' 

" I wonder, Ben Nathan, which will prove the truer 
— the hope of the hero who made his apotheosis on 
Mount McGregor, or the forecast of that lion-hearted 
saint who went up to that God whose lightest word he 
sought to obey with unquestioning fealty, from the 
field of Chancellorsville. 

''I am glad, Ben Kathan, that the messages of 



THE VETERAX AND HIS PIPE. 201 

sympathy that came up from the South were miscon- 
strued by the suffering soldier. It no doubt added 
greatly to the placidity of his last days to have his 
hopes confirmed and feel that the turmoil of war which 
he directed was but the precursor of a peace and pros- 
perity more lasting and complete than even his patri- 
otic aspiration could have believed possible to result 
therefrom. We can not mourn in him a hero, standing 
forth as the incarnation of cherished ideas, as the 
people of the North should, and, to a certain extent no 
doubt do ; but as a soldier I think we appreciate him 
better and mourn him even more sincerely than those 
who reaped advantage from his victory. We are a 
military people, Ben Xathan, both by instinct and 
training, and know how to appreciate a soldier. Grant 
was a soldier of the noblest type. We mourn his death 
and exult in his fame." 
August 7th, 1885. 



THE MOUE'T OF TEAJSTSFIGUEA- 
TIOK 



IT is over, Blower. We have bidden adieu to our old 
commander — the last grand memento of a marvel- 
ous epoch. We were with those who assembled on 
Mount McGregor, but we did not look upon the face of 
the dead. We remember it as it appeared when the 
light of battle and the glow of victory shone upon it, 
and we would not have the picture dimmed by the 
shadow of death or the trace of suffering. As he was, 
so shall he always be in our memory. We only went 
to salute his ashes and to look in the faces of those who 
crowded about his bier. It was a marvelous spectacle 
— the beginning of a mighty pageant. We hope to be 
forgiven, Blower, if with our desire to show respect for 
the greatest of the grand army which freedom mus- 
tered in for the defense of right, was mingled a strange 
anxiety to note the behavior of the multitude — to 
compare this pageant with others of similar character, 
and institute some comparison between Yesterday and 
Today. Perhaps I was the more inclined to do this 
because our friend, Pascal Kaines, has so persistently 
declared that an apparent and notable change is taking 
place in the character of our Northern people. I asked 
him to go with us, Blower, but he declined, for reasons 
that seemed to me both creditable to him and honor^ 
able to the dead, 

303 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 203 

" No, no, Ben Kathan," he said, '' go you and bury 
your dead, and note with your own eyes whether they 
who commemorate his death are the same people that 
mourned at the grave of Lincoln. If your eyes and 
he^rt find no difference, then it may be that my reason 
and observation are at fault. I will not go, because if 
I stood as a representative of my own feeling, I must 
stand almost alone. The occasion is one that belong-s 
to you. At the best, we of the South could be only 
strangers in your lodge of sorrow. We honor the dead 
as a brave foeman and a generous conqueror. We do 
not mourn for him. In his death we have lost nothing, 
as by his life we gained nothing but the bitterness of 
defeat. He represented no principle or idea which the 
South can honor or adopt, consistently with self-respect 
and due regard for the memory of her own heroes, 
save devotion to what he conceived to be his duty. I 
am glad that our people recognize this fact, and that 
their declarations, properly construed, cannot be taken 
as indices of an}^ other spirit. They will stand 
in line and paj^ honor to his remains, distinct- 
ively and properly, as Confederates acknowledging 
and in part requiting, the debt of honor contracted at 
Appomattox. This is as it should be. 

" JN^o doubt their action will be misconstrued. The 
sentimental Is"orth will be sure to consider it an indi- 
cation of much more than it professes to be. There 
will be a deluge of gush which will seem to me all the 
more whimsical because I recognize the sincerity of 
your countrymen from whom it will mostly come. If 
they would but pause to think they would see how ab- 



2()'i: THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 

surd is the deduction they would draw from this action. 
Suppose ex-President Davis were to die to-morrow. 
Would the people of the ]S"orth — would the government 
of the United States and the states of the North — join 
with us in mourning for ou7' dead ? You would not ; 
you could not. Jefferson Davis represents to you, to 
the people of the North, to every man who was loyal 
to the IJnion cause, ideas, purposes, results which are 
abhorrent to every fiber of your nature. He is to you 
the incarnation of dismemberment and separatism. He 
represents the idea of human mequality, as opposed to 
your pet dogma of equality of rights. His very name 
signifies to you the antipode of your idea of ' Freedom 
and the Eight.' 

" Not only that, but in your mind the blood of hun- 
dreds of thousands is upon his hands, and the woes of 
many millions clinging to his skirts. You winced just 
now when I referred to him as ' ex-President,' yet such 
was his title, conferred upon him by the unanimous 
voice of a people who willingly followed his leadership, 
approved his acts, and despite his errors still look upon 
him as an unfortunate victim, who has suffered unjustly 
because of his devotion to the cause which they com- 
mitted to his hands. You see, Ben Nathan, there is no 
reciprocity in the matter, and cannot be. We do not 
honor Grant for the mctories he achieved, but for the 
magnanimity he displayed toward the captives of his 
sword. You owe no such debt of honor. Instead of 
being an evidence of reconciliation, our participation 
in the funeral pageantry merely shows our willingness 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 205 

to forget obnoxious achievements in order to repay 
personal favor. 

" The only portion of our people who will mourn 
the dead leader in any such sense as his death appeals 
to you who loved and followed him — as the represent- 
ative of a great principle and a righteous cause — is 
that unfortunate race whom poverty prevents from 
giving imposing expression to their sorrow, and the 
color of whose skin, I fear, would hardly make them 
welcome participants in the funeral pageantry. Yet 
they are the true mourners. They have the right to 
stand even between the living soldiers and their dead 
commander. If I were a colored man I would walk day 
and night to be present and claim the honor of march- 
ing behind his ashes. If I had charge of his obsequies, 
while I would welcome not less warmly the military 
and civic organizations of the South, I would put close 
behind the catafalque, in the place of honored and de- 
serving mourners, a hundred, aye, a thousand of that 
race— jean-clad and reverent, types of its best and 
forerunners of the hope his sword conquered for them. 
I honor him because he first recognized and honored 
them as deserving elements of the new Eepublic, which 
you think is safely. built upon the fragments of the 
old. Some he may have dinstinguished above their 
individual desert, but none beyond the right and merit 
of the race they represented. I will not go myself, Ben 
E'athan, but I have sent a check to pay the expenses of 
one who is a teacher, and may some day become a 
leader of his people, from Buckhead Lodge to Mount 
McGregor and back. He has never seen the great 



206 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

soldier and ought to look upon the dead man's face. It 
may be to him an inspiration that will yield good fruit 
in the future and he has well deserved this favor at 
my hands. He is the only son, Ben Nathan, of that 
faithful servant who song'ht me out between the picket 
lines that night you wot of, and pressed to your lips as 
well as mine, that draught of cool water which was of 
all things most precious next to life itself. His father 
was a hero. The son is a faithful and worthy teacher. 
His people need great men, and their necessity must 
call them forth. That liberty which chose a tanner's 
son for its great instrument, may yet find a soldier or 
a statesman in the direct line from my 'boy' John! 
The slave who risked and lost his life for his master is 
no unlikely sire for a race of heroes !" 

It is true, Blower, it is not the same. I scanned 
with care the faces that bent over the dead hero's dust. 
A score of years ago I looked into the faces of those 
who crowded solemnly and ceaselessly for a last look at 
the features of the dead Lincoln. Hour after hour, day 
after day, the silent stream poured on. A block aw^ay 
sometimes, the multitude stood in double columns wait- 
ing for their turn to come. The night brought scarcely 
any diminution. Crowds waited in the street until 
after midnight — tender ladies, gray -haired men, and 
children delicately bred. Thousands begged with tears 
for one more hour to gaze upon the homely lineaments. 
Those w^ho had once passed through, went back to the 
foot of the line and waited again for hours, for another 
opportunity. It seemed that the land was draped from 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 20T 

sea to sea. But we hardly noted that, Blower, so im- 
penetrable was the darkness in our own sore hearts. 
Great multitudes collected at the crossings and at little 
stations where the train did not stop, merely to" gaze 
and weep. Great fires were lighted like beacons along 
the railway that men might stand and mutely testify 
their grief. Cities seemed dead to everything but the 
thought of woe. The streets were crowded but 
silent. 

In all the millions who walked softly by that bier we 
did not see one smiling face or careless eye. The wife 
and family of one who watched at its head had not 
seen him for a year. They knew he was with the funeral 
train, yet they passed through and did not note his pres- 
ence. The dead Lincoln blinded their eyes, even to hus- 
band and father. A watch was set in one city, and it was 
found that more than half of those who came were in 
tears when they approached the coffin, and hardly one 
passed down upon the other side who was not weeping. 
[N'ever in history was there such a spectacle of univer- 
sal sorrow. Friends met and wept as they clasped 
hands in silence. Enemies who had for years passed 
each other b}^ in silence shook hands with quivering 
lips and forgot their enmity in the presence of him who 
liad Avrought so long and arduously " with charity for 
all." Even when nature compelled interment a wail of 
sorrowing disappointment went up from those who had 
missed, not a great spectacle, but a sight of the dear, 
loved face. At a country station where the train was 
switched from one track to another at midnight, an 
humble woman who sold refreshments to the travelers 



208 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

at a little counter in the depot, stood in her place 
her eyes suffused with tears, refusing compensation for 
the coffee she furnished the escort, and begging pite- 
ously to be taken to the next great city for one glimpse 
of the dead whom all the land so loved ! 

I doubt if one in a hundred noted anything of the 
decorations. They were something wonderful for that 
da}^, but eyes that were dim with falling tears took 
little note of the adornments of the bier. I have often 
thought, Blower, that sorrow could hardly have been 
more universal and overwhelming when, on the same 
night, the death angel touched the first-born in every 
household in a whole land. Lincoln was mourned so 
deeply that a failure to manifest a participation in the 
common grief was even perilous. Mobs gathered and 
houses were defaced because the owners refused to dis- 
play the emblems of universal grief. Years afterward 
when a man who had been very prominent in our na- 
tional history passed away, he had almost a pauper's 
funeral in the city which had delighted to honor him, 
because men still remembered with sore hearts that he 
refused to exhibit the emblems of mourning when 
Lincoln died. It was as if all the heart's ties had been 
sundered at once, so solemn, so tender, and so universal 
was the reverence the nation paid to its great dead. 

It is gone. Many of those who crowded to the cot- 
tage on Mount McGregor were the personal friends and 
associates of the dead liero. Their lives were " in the 
coffin there with Caesar's." There were quivering lips 
and dewy eyes and solemn drooping steps as they passed 
reverently by the leader's corpse. Heaven bless them, 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 209 

and heaven pity them ! Let us whisper no names ! 
Their grief is as sacred as the stricken wife's bereave- 
ment ! 

But, ah me, there were some — also ! too many, who 
would spare neither — ghouls who came to prey on 
beating hearts! Vultures who would batten on the 
dead! Magpies who noted only the externals that 
they might gossip of them afterward ! 

There is no doubt that the final pageant will be the 
most wonderful ever seen upon the continent, if not 
the grandest funeral ovation that the world has ever 
knovrn. Our comrades that follow the great leader's 
dust will give to it a touching solemnity. The some- 
time enemies who follow in his train will give a curious 
interest. He is perhaps the first of conquerors to be 
followed to his grave by voluntary associations of the 
captives of his sword. The constituted authorities of 
country and its constituent commonwealths will make 
a most imposing and dignified array. The best, the 
noblest, and most gifted of the land will be there to 
testify sincere and earnest homage. The land will offer 
a wonderful display of reverence and devotion to the 
memory of the second name of its climacteric era. 
There will be no show of rancor, no hint of any lack of 
chie respect and honor. The great Eepublic honors his 
virtues, exults in his patriotism ; is proud of his genius ; 
glories in his magnanimity, and challenges the world 
to match his fortitude. Those who lately contemned, 
to-day vie with his warmest admirers in adulation. 

All this is as it should be, Blower. My eyes grow 
dim with tears of joy that in the presence of his ashes 
14 



210 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

rancor disappears and discord is silent. But it is not 
like that wonderful pageant of a score of years ago. 
The multitude will no doubt be decorous and grave ; 
the display more notable and the assemblage more 
brilliant ; but the tears will not flow as then. The 
bowed heads and heaving breasts will be less numerous. 
Dry eyes and curious glances will be more often seen 
and the hush of woe will j^ass more quickly away. It 
is not because the people would do him less honor or 
hold his memory in less regard. It is only because the 
thought that inspired his life had passed out of the life 
of the people. They are proud to do him honor, but 
the ideas that were the corner-stones of his greatness 
are of Yesterday and not of To-day. Had he died 
when Lincoln died he would have been honored like 
him with a nation's tears. Now the land does homage 
to his life with proud acclaim. Then his achievements 
would have been applauded on account of the cause for 
which he fought. I^ow they are remembered because 
of the difliculties he overcame. I do not mean to speak 
disparagingly. Blower. I only wonder if the life which 
has overlaid and smothered the thought of Yesterday 
is really a better, truer, noble aspiration, or is the hero's 
grave to be but a milestone that will mark the swift 
recession of patriotic devotion, purity, and virtue, before 
the corrosion of a lower, meaner, baser ideal ? Yester- 
day mourns him not merely as a central figure of its 
life, but as a prime exponent of its thought. To-day 
— ah, well. To-day crowds curiously to view his funeral 
pageant, to count the horses on his funeral-car, note 
the draping of his bier, and fire minute guns about 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. ^H 

his tomb! When their children ask of Grant, no 
doubt, they will be told it was a goodly spectacle ! ' To- 
day knows not its debt to the great dead, for it has 
forgotten from what it was delivered by his hand. 
August 14tli, 1885. 



HYMNS OF THE AGES. 



OUE pleasant summer plans w^re sadly marred by 
the visitation of sorrow, Blower ; and nature as if 
to testify her participation in our woe, let loose the 
storms which had slumbered since we first came to this 
quiet nook, and our comrade-guide declared, with the 
caution peculiar to the waterman when speaking of a 
new experience, that he did not " exactly remember 
ever to have seen just such a storm on the lake at just this 
time of year. If it had came a month earlier or had 
happened round about a month later, 't wouldn't a 
been surprisin','' he said " but jest at this time, it sartin 
was a good deal out o' the common." 

The week of elemental warfare ended with a 
shower on Sunday night. We sat and watched the 
tempest as it swept over the bay, until the clouds 
broke away and the stars shone clear. We concluded 
that it was the " clearing up " shower, and having 
noted the quarter in which the wind sat decided that 
the morrow would be a rare day for sport, and so de- 
termined upon an early start. 

The forecast of the night was abundently fulfilled 
by the dawning. The beautiful bay was as waveless 
as when hostile squadrons lay in sight of each other 
upon its bright waters, unable to begin the work of 
slaughter, because of the breathless calm that held 

212 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 213 

them peacefully apart. But the fish were eager and 
alert, as Raines had predicted. Hardl}^ had the first 
glittering lure touched the glassy surface when it 
caught the eye of a waiting Labrax, and, 

With sweeping tail and quivering fin. 
He sprung above the waters blue. 

in his eagerness to seize the prey. Then there was the 
gleam of golden scales and the foam of angry strug- 
gles. The reel sang merrily. The fine silk line cut 
through the silvery surface, just tinged with the rosy 
light of the coming day, with that musical hiss which 
thrills the nerves and steadies the softly straining hand 
of the angler worthy of the name. The light rod 
bends evenly from shaft to tip. The attent eye 
watches the course of the surprised and angry victim 
as he sweeps back and forth in vain attempts to release 
himself from the bond, light as a spider's web, but 
strong as gleaming steal, that drags him with relent- 
less grip to the waiting net, wherein his struggles end, 
and the swift changing scales clothe with a golden 
nimbus the last moments of the finny brave. With 
the sunrise comes a gentle western breeze, that covers 
the water with a light, sparkling ripple, which seems 
but to inflame theYestless rovers of the deep. Hardly 
a moment passes that from bow or stern a fight, hot 
enough to stir the sleepiest skiggard who loiters yawn- 
ing and listless at his morning meal, is not in progress 
in our little craft. The wind bears us slowly before it, 
and the trailing bait seems to grow more enticing to 
the flashing piscine eyes, to which as well as to human 
vision, no doubt, '^ blessings brighten as they take their 



214 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

flight." Our weather-beaten fellow-soldier, who mans 
the oars and wields the landing-net, is kept busy ren- 
dering, impartial aid to his old foe and former com- 
rade ; for the best of artificial limbs offers but insecure 
support to the angler with but an inch and a half of 
keel beneath him, and a five-pound bass upon an eight- 
ounce rod. 

Others may sing the delight of capturing " mot- 
tled beauties " in still, dark pools, where the for- 
est shadow hides unnumbered myriads of persistent 
enemies, whose keen stings are held but to increase the 
angler's delight. The young man whom fortune has 
blest with a purse long enough to stand the strain of a 
regulation " rig," and nerves sufficiently obtuse to en- 
able him to brave the multitudinous annoyances of the 
Restigouche, may rave of the rapture of racing with a 
salmon up and down its icy rapids. These and a 
dozen other forms of this charming sport may each be 
pronounced by their especial devotees the very acme of 
the angler's delight ; but one thing is certain, Blower, 
that for a half -disabled veteran the rod and line 
offer no keener enjoyment than a pleasant morning on 
one of our great northern lakes, with a light breeze off 
the shore and black and yellow bass in a complacent 
mood. So at least three old campaigners unanimously 
decided when, as the sun grew warm, we sought the 
shore ; and in the shade which lay about a cool spring, 
bubbling from the slaty cliff and trickling over bright 
sands on its brief course to meet the waiting waves, par- 
took of the generous luncheon, which a friendly fore- 
thought had provided ; counted up our spoils ; smoked 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 215 

our pipes outstretched upon the fragrant turf, and 
waited for the evening breeze and homeward row. 

It was then that I roused Pascal Raines from his 
nicotian dreams, to tell me something more of that 
patriotic psalmody to which he had once alluded, and 
which I took cafe to intimate that he had evidently 
studied with peculiar discrimination. He smiled in 
pleasant appreciation of my well-intended flattery as 
he replied : 

" Very well, Ben JN'athan, this is, perhaps, as good 
a time and place as I shall ever find for the redemp- 
tion of my promise. Strange enough, it was almost 
Avithin sight of this very spot that my attention was 
first directed to this subject, and that, too, under cir- 
cumstances the reverse of pleasant. 

" You did not know that I had ever been here 
before ? Oh, yes, the pleasant water we have drifted 
over this morning was no stranger to my eye some 
twenty odd years ago, though it was not nearly so 
pleasant a prospect then. When not imprisoned 
beneath jagged, broken ice-floes the water was almost 
always covered with cold, sullen-looking waves whose 
white crests and steely sides made even more frigid the 
winds that chilled the marrow in the bones of some 
thousands of war's unfortunates, who were the unwil- 
Hng guests of their foes. That low, dark spit of land 
that cuts the horizon yonder, just hides the outline of 
the island on which stood a celebrated military prison 
— a bare bit of wave-washed bleakness, admirably 
adapted to the use to which it was put, so far as the 
mere security of the prisoners was concerned. We 



216 THE VETEKA.N AND HIS PIPE. 

used to think it pretty hard that men whose homes 
were in the ' sunny South,' and whose blood was at- 
tempered to that warmer cUme, should be immured in 
the midst of a frozen sea upon the verj^ northern verge 
of the national domain. It looked hke murder. We 
were not so badly cared for, in other respects, but men 
did die of cold in those contract-builded, wind-swepi 
barracks. While others — many others — who did not 
die then and there, bore away the seeds of disease, 
which even the genial influences of their native clime 
could not eradicate. I thought then, that it was pur- 
posely done, by that iron-hearted man who shaped the 
nation's policy in matters pertaining to the war. It is 
hard to get over this belief, too, terrible as it seems. 

" I know you have a similar feeling in regard to 
some of our southern prisoners, and I cannot deny that 
the facts are terribly against any other hypothesis. 
You claim that, your soldiers in our hands might have 
been given the common blessings of fresh air, pure 
water, and at least the chance to provide themselves 
with comfortable shelter in a region abounding in for- 
ests and streams. You claim that these things were 
forbidden them ; and that, in addition to insufficient 
food and scanty raiment, you were compelled to bur- 
row in the earth for shelter from sun and storm ; that 
words cannot picture the contamination of the pools 
from which you were compelled to slake your thirst. 
You believe that the fierce passions which war had in- 
flamed transformed our leaders into brutish beasts 
whose lust for vengeance made them murderers of the 
vilest type. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 217 

"I can not deny the facts. The terrible story 
which I read, in your flushed face and flashing eye is, 
no doubt J true, so far as the acts themselves are con- 
cerned. I can not deny them, because the picture 
of those mounds and burrows, with their savage, 
brutish-seeming denizens, was ineradicably seared upon 
my memory by one glance ; and my ears will forever 
thrill with the strains of a marvelous chorus welling 
up from the lips of men, in whose hearts hope must 
already have been dead. I blush to say it, Ben N^athan, 
but I speak the simple truth, when I tell you that I 
never had one atom of admiration for, or pride in, the 
moral attributes of you Northern people, until I heard 
the songs that floated one sultry evening from the pes- 
tilential mire of Anderson ville. I confess, Ben Nathan, 
that the name of that terrible stockade calls up remem- 
brance of a sin — a crime against humanity — the stain 
of which must ever rest upon my people's fame and 
taint for many a day the history of our civilization. 

"But let us not speak of these things today. The 
sun is too bright and the face of nature all too peaceful 
for such dolorous memories. Some other day, when 
the storm lashes the water into foam and the sky is 
dark and lowering, I will show you that even these are 
things not to be forgotten, since they constitute but 
another proof of that inherent, and, I fear, ineradicable 
difference which constitutes us two peoples, whether 
under one government or two. This is a time for 
brighter themes. Earth and sky are aglow with ten- 
der radiance, and the soft notes of the wood-thrush 
Jiidden away in the shadier recesses of this little glen. 



218 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

seem to call us back to the theme you suggested — the 
patriotic songs of our American people. 

" Before I come to speak of them, Ben Nathan, per- 
haps I ought to say something about the principles 
which underlie all national or patriotic hymnody. I 
thought it all out over in the prison-camp, ten miles 
across the head yonder, one day when I was lying 
somewhat more than half sick in my bunk and listen- 
ing to the songs of those who guarded us. They were 
brave and kindly men, nearly all of them veterans half 
disabled by wounds or hardship. Some of them were 
beardless boys, and some of them well past the mili- 
tary age. I was struck with the character of their 
songs, and thought to myself that these men, whose 
honesty of purpose I could not deny, had become the 
unconscious victims of that fanaticism which had for 
years used this great instrumentality to inspire the 
northern people with the sacredness of the crusade it 
waged against slavery. Three years before — I was a 
college boy then in New England — I had heard the 
Hutchinsons sing, and had found myself unable to re- 
sist the thrill of humanitarian sentimentality which 
was stirred to life, even in tlie dullest breast, by the rap- 
turous exultation of Whittier, Garrison, and other 
poets of that day, who may well claim to have been 
inspired by a zeal for liberty unprecedented for sincer- 
ity and disinterestedness in any age or clime. I did 
not think so then. I accounted these men as arch- 
hypocrites, who Avith hellish cunning had married 
noble sentiment to flowing numbers, and had used the 
combination to mislead and corrupt the simple-minded. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 219 

" It was only after careful study and close observa- 
tion of contrasted types that I learned that the patri- 
otic song, or the song that is based on a patriotic idea, 
always performs a double function. I used to accept 
the ancient apothegm about the maker of a people's 
songs being able to bid defiance to the maker of its 
laws, at par ; giving no heed to the farther fact that 
the song-maker himself is bound by inflexible condi- 
tions, which imperatively curtail his influence and do- 
main. No rules of art can give his work success. No 
rythmic skill or deftness of versification is sufiicient. 
No loftiness of sentiment, fervor of patriotism, or 
grandeur of diction, nor all of them combined, can 
make a national or patriotic song which will ever shape 
a peoples' or a country's destiny. The one essential 
pre-requisite is that such a song must always express 
what a people have already thought and felt. Not 
only that, but it must express a sentiment on which 
the popular mind has dwelt so long and earnestly that 
the song seems but the echo of their thought. It be- 
comes, therefore, first of all things, an exponent of 
public sentiment, an index of popular feeling. It may 
intensify or perpetuate such sentiment, but it can 
never create or inspire a popular thought. The patri- 
otic song must be a type of the age and people, and its 
measures must alwa3^s be synchronous with the heart- 
beat of a national life. 

" Miriam's song, the earliest patriotic rhapsody of 
the Israelite, throbbing as it does with a thrill of a 
marvelous deliverance, yet displays amid its exultation 
etnd savage imprecation of the enemy, that cool 



220 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

assumption that the enemies of Israel are for that very 
reason the foes of God, w^hich has ever remained the 
peculiar characteristic of the Jewish people. Ko one 
can doubt that this 'was the thought uppermost in the 
heart of each at that moment of miraculous triumph. 
Miriam sim^^ly phrased the sentiment of everyone who 
had come dry-shod through the sea, with the guiding 
pillar of flame and cloud, and had seen the enemies 
who had so long oppressed, destroyed by the very in- 
strumentalities which had wrought their own deliver- 
ance. It was first effect and then cause — the voice of 
a day and the inspiration of the ages. Of a like char- 
acter were the war cries and battle hymns of all 
ancient peoples, only pitched upon a much lower key 
to suit the tenor of a baser hfe. 

" The song with which the Englishman has so long 
cheered himself in victory and upheld the stubborn 
Anglo-Saxon courage which will not recognize defeat — 
that adjustable piece of versified devotion, ' God Save 
the King,' or 'Queen,' as the case may be — is an out- 
burst of enthusiastic loyalty, not for the person of the 
sovereign, but for the throne, tlie fiction of British na- 
tionality. The ' Marseillaise ' is the bursting battle-cry 
of millions springing up from earth to overturn and 
avenge the tyranny of centuries. The German nation- 
al songs are simply crystallizations of the idea of home, 
the fatherland, nativity, regarded as an impulse to mar- 
tial prowess. 

" Our own national songs curiously illustrate the 
same principle. ' Yankee Doodle ' was the type of the 
Revolutionary era, almost all the songs of which repre- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE, 221 

sent a people keenly alive to their own deficiencies, 
employing the ridicule of their more cultured and ar- 
rogant enemies to convey a half -jocose defiance. The 
same spirit continued to inspire that remarkable burst 
of song with which you people of the ]^orth celebrated 
the victories of our second struggle with the mother 
country. JN'one of these really obtained any secure hold 
upon the people of the South. Even ' Yankee Doodle' 
continued to have much of the original significance 
which it possessed when the British soldiery first piped 
it in derision of the ISTew England yeomanry. What 
we have generally considered our special national an- 
thems have been pitched upon a key a little more ex- 
alted than that of our British cousins, and a little less 
domestic than that of the German national lyric. ' Hail 
Columbia ' is openly modeled on • Eule Britannia,' and 
as a piece of national braggadocio is even less merito- 
rious. 

" The. Star Spangled Banner ' touches a higher plane 
of sentiment ; and the picture of the patriot watching 
in the early morning for the flag the night had hidden, 
gives force and pathos to the appeal to the God of bat- 
tles. The burst of grateful acclamation with which, in 
the last stanza, deliverance in the past, protection for 
the future, the peaceful home and the scath of devas- 
tating war, are all blended in one swift-rushing pano- 
rama of picture-painting words — is almost worthy of 
the national life it commemorated, besides representing 
fairly well the devotional spirit of that time. We had 
not then passed the age of self. Patriotism knew" but 
two great impulses — devotion to the land of one's birth 



222 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

or adoption, and the assertion of individual right by 
the masses of an oppressed people. The Covenanter 
spirit — that strange compound of the Anglican sense 
of duty, and the Jewish idea of Jehovah, the stern, 
inflexible avenger — still ruled the world. The sanctity 
of humanity was yet uncomprehended. The nation 
looked to the God of their fathers, sang his praises, and 
implored his protection in the fervid strains of this 
much-abused song : 

Oh, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand 
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation. 

Self-preservation, deliverance from evil which threat- 
ened not only the land as an abstraction, but the peo- 
ple and their homes, w^ere the motives which stirred 
then the popular heart. The struggle for national ex- 
istence was still fresh enough in the hearts of our peo- 
ple to give a peculiar force to the verse, 

" Praise the power which hath made and preserved us a Nation." 

The justice of our cause — the defensive w^ar of a young 
nationality — is alleged as the chief hope of victory and 
the reason of our trust in God. 

" Taken as a whole, Ben JN'athan, I am inclined to 
count the ' Star Spangled Banner' the broadest, noblest, 
sweetest, and tenderest of all national lyrics up to the 
beginning of our great civil war. Its dignity is of that 
unconscious kind that best of all befits a nation of free- 
men. There is not a hint of revenge or barbarism or 
boastfulness in it. It is Miriam's hymn of rejoicing- 
refined and purified by the Christian sentiment of 
home, the aspirations of a newly-planted national life, 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 223 

iind the trustful hope of a new-born civihzation. Like 
all that came before the climacteric era of our national 
life, however, it is infinitely below that marvelous burst 
of song that ushered in the conflict and inspired every 
step in the onward march of your armies. You have 
scorned and forgotten the inspiration of that day, and 
your children hardly know the words of the old songs ; 
but the spirit which they typified, and the devotion they 
aroused, were the real cause of the success of your 
arms. To that spirit is due the triumph of the past 
and the peace of the present, and to it the future must 
look for its security and glory." 
August 21, 1885. 



THE SONGS OF TAVO PEOPLES. 



I ASKED Pascal Raines, after I had heard him set 
forth in such appreciative language the merits of 
'' The Star-Spangled Banner," what need there was of a 
new National song, since this embodied such noble senti- 
ments and embraced no Avord that could in any man- 
ner affect the sensibilities of any section. Did he think, 
I inquired, that " The Bonnie Blue Flag " had usurped 
its place in the sentiments of a portion of the people ! 
" No," he answered promptly, " it is not that. As 
a popular melody 'The Bonnie Blue Flag' was hardly 
a success even at the South, Avhere it was formally and 
professedly adopted as the acknowdedged and au- 
thoritative expression of public sentiment. It is 
another illustration of the fact that such songs can not 
be made up according to a prescribed formula. So to 
speak, it was the recognized official metrical exponent 
of the patriotic sentiment of the Confederacy, but it 
had very httle hold on the popular heart. It was sung 
in the parlor, and was the pet of good society, but 
somehow or other it never seemed to stir any feeling 
that could be accounted deep or permanent, at a time 
when blood was at' fever heat, and each day's life 
expunged the record of yesterday's sentimentalities. 
It was no doubt intended that it should take the place 
of the old National anthem in the minds of the South- 

224 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. - 225 

ern people, but it signally failed to accomplish the task 
assigned to it. 

" Perhaps one reason for this was the curious uncer- 
tainty that prevailed so long as to what really was the 
Confederate flag, and the prominence given both in the 
field and in the states themselves to the different state 
flags. The distinction between the flag of the Con- 
federacy and the battle-flag under which its soldiers so 
long marched to victory may also have had something 
to do with it. At all events, both the flag and the 
song written in its honor seem to have taken but a 
slight hold upon the hearts of the people. I have my- 
self been surprised at the transitory character of the 
memories attaching to them. Even the soldiers of the 
Confederacy seem to have had no romantic attach- 
ment for its flag — at least none that survives the mem- 
ory of defeat. I doubt if half my surviving comrades 
could to-day tell what the flag was like which they 
followed so faithfully through the varying fortunes of 
four years of strife. Probably no great revolution ever 
had so evanescent an emblem. The ' stars and bars,' 
even in the heat of the conflict, did not seem to have 
any great hold upon the popular fancy. I think " Stone- 
wall Jackson " was right in the statement generally 
attributed to him, that it was ' a great mistake to try 
to divide the IN'ational flag as well as the National 
territory.' The truth is, that both in name and fact, 
the ' stars and bars ' were but a feeble imitation of the 
' stars and stripes.' If a strong distinctive emblem had 
been adopted it would have been remembered both by 
friend and foe, and would have constituted an undying 
15 



226 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

feature of the romance which is sure to blossom on the 
grave of unsuccessful revolution. 

"No, it was not this flag — an intended counterfeit 
of tile one it was designed especially to oppose and 
subvert — nor the song consecrated to its exaltation 
that lessened the power of the ' Star-spangled Banner ' 
as a National melody. The simple fact is that the idea 
it was designed especially to perpetuate and enforce, 
the idea of national preservation and security against 
the assaults of foreign power, lost its force and interest 
in the presence of a more intense and vital thought. 
The second war with England not only put an end to 
all fear of invasion on the part of our people, but the 
songs of exultation which its brief but brilliant record 
evoked had hardly become familiar when the shadow 
of a still greater danger began to show itself in our 
life. The invader was forgotten in the heat and fury 
of that internal discord which culminated in the war, 
not for the dissolution of the Union, but for the par- 
tition of its power and the duplication of its fran- 
chises. 

"Did it ever strike you as a curious thing, Ben 
Nathan, that the revolt of the Southern people was 
intended not to subvert, destroy, modify, or avoid the 
Government of the United States, but to establish 
another nationality not only of the same general char- 
acter, but even in its details substantially identical with 
it ? It is, perhaps, the first instance in history in 
which revolution has not at least demanded change, and 
in which sedition could only offer a vague apprehension 
in excuse for rts acts. Yet that apprehension was 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 227 

based on an instinctive appreciation of radical and 
incurable differences which had already parted the 
country in twain long before the first gun was trained 
against the walls of Sumter. The shadow of this great 
crisis — the knowledge of our supreme danger as a 
nation — had rested over us for well nigh half a century, 
growing every moment more and more sharply out- 
lined. A generation had already grown up in its 
umbrage. A quarter of a century before, dismember- 
ment had been openly and persistently advocated. 
From that time onward it had been a matter of con- 
tinuous and hardly covert threat. The shadow of 
sedition eclipsed the fear of invasion. We lost our 
terror of the stranger, in our apprehension of forcible 
partition among the heirs of our glory. 

''It is said that the lightest scratch upon the heart 
— the merest touch of the sharpest instrument or the 
point of the finest needle — thrills the strongest nature 
with the most abject and overwhelming fear. It is no 
wonder the nation trembled. It was cut across the 
heart by the sharp sword of controversy. Its vital 
tissues were pricked by the adamantine spear-points of 
irreconciliable difference. The climacteric conflict be- 
tween right and wrong was impending, and in the 
dimly seen havoc which lay between the related forces 
we forgot to be grateful for past deliverance, or appre- 
hensive of future harm from foreign power. The 
' Star-spangled Banner' lost its significance as a national 
anthem w^hen the conscience of a part of our people was 
ready to put individual right above national unity, while 
another wing were ready to subvert the national exist- 



228 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ence in order to secure legal privilege and perpetuate, 
social rank. 

The South put the right to own and control the 
slave above the national peace, and the abolitionist was 
willing to see the Union disrupted because the shield of 
its authority protected and perpetuated slavery. Is'o 
wonder the nation forgot the invader. The germ of 
peril lay hidden in its own life. Liberty anathematized 
the Federal compact because it permitted slavery to 
exist. Slavery abjured the union of states because it 
apprehended an inclination not to observe the letter of 
the compact. It was a confl-ict between the written 
law on which our nation claims to rest its existence, 
and the ' higher law ' to which, it was claimed, our 
civilization is due. There was this curious condition 
attendant upon this conflict : Whichever view pre- 
vailed, the nation was threatened with destruction. 
This fact was apparent to every one and for a quarter 
of a century formed the basis of continuous and success- 
ful entreaty addressed alternately to the lovers of 
liberty and the champions of slavery. The former 
were besought to moderate their zeal for the right, in 
the hope that time would bring a peaceful and happy 
remedy in some far future, when greed and prejudice 
should relax their hold upon human nature. The lat- 
ter were in like manner importuned by the same class 
of doubting patriots, to wait and trust to time to teach 
the liberty -loving fanatics of the ]N"orth that the Union 
with slavery was preferable to liberty without the 
Union. This conflict, in its various phases, dwarfed all 
other thought. Very naturally it left its impress on our 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 229 

popular songs, and in the entl inspired the noblest 
patriotic hymnody which the world has ever known. 
" Perhaps nothing more curious than the develop- 
ment which followed m the line of patriotic song was 
ever known. I do not refer to the distinctively con- 
troversial or doctrinal songs, which constituted a spe- 
cific part of the armament of the Abohtionists. The 
old Garrisonian war-ciy was a fit example of rhythmic 
arguments, now rusty and forgotten, like old armor on 
an ancient castle w^all : 

We will speak out — we will be heard, 

Though all earth's systems crack, 
We will not bate a single word 

Nor take a letter back. 

"They were bright and effective weapons then, 
however, and many of them of celestial temper. Most 
of them were too keen for anything but warfare, and 
did not yield themselves readily to simulated senti- 
ment. With rare exceptions, they w^ere wielded only 
by professionals, and cannot be said to have become in 
any proper sense popular songs. 

" Such was not the case, however, with that other 
class of songs which the fixing of public attention upon 
the neo^ro no doubt brou^^ht into existence. I mean, of 
course, those curious blendings of exaggerated senti- 
ment and pathetic drollery v/hich permitted the mar- 
riage of minor chords and a jig movement, known as 
'negro melodies.' Intentionally or unintentionally, 
these melodies became instrumentalities in the great 
conflict. Perhaps their primary purpose was ridicule. 
At thio time no one can tell. It may have been hoped 



230 THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 

that, in this case as in all others, familiarity would 
breed contempt. If so, the purpose failed. However 
absurd the sentiment or exaggerated the action may 
have been, the refram of the slave's sad fate Avas sure 
to crop out somewhere in the rude syllables, and find 
proper setting in its quaint and bizarre measures. 

" Perhaps the most startling and unforeseen incident 
connected with the introduction of the negro melody, 
was the amazing popularity of this class of songs among 
the people of the South. Though some of them seemed 
to have been expressly designed to direct attention to, 
and awaken sympathy for, the pitiable injustice of the 
slave's hard fate, no public sentiment could restrain 
their spread among the Southern people. Slavery has 
unquestionably left a negroid stamp upon Southern 
thought and sentiment, just as it has broadened our 
vowels, strengthened our labials and modified almost 
every form of our speech. It was a game of give and 
take — the white man taking purposely the slave's lib- 
erty — his unrequited toil — and giving unconsciously 
year by year something of his own manhood to trans- 
form the African into an American. The master was 
undoubtedly compelled by the irony of fate to bear 
something of his slave's burden and take on tongue and 
brain the stamp of his generic attributes. Out of these 
facts it arose that the song to which the footsteps of 
your soldiers echoed on their unresting march to vic- 
tory, was but the creaking of the gallows-tree at 
Charlestown, made comprehensible by words irrelevant 
and quaint enough to suit themselves to the life the 
maniac-martyr had lived and the unlawful but bencfi- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 231 

cent purpose for which he had died. At the same time, 
the South took from the negro's hps the song which it 
not only made its real national anthem, but with strange 
inconsistency constituted also the battle-cry of a con- 
flict waged for the perpetuation of slavery. 

" These two songs were the product and types of 
the two great forces which our civilization had devel- 
oped. The symbol and demonstration of the two peo- 
ples which had resulted from our national life. They 
were national songs, each expressing in a quaint and 
unique manner the dominant thought of a distinct and 
peculiar people. The Abolition sentiment of the North 
had sailed so long under false colors that even this song, 
which so faithfully forecasted its final triumph, did it 
under a figure so obscure that it could even then be 
readily disowned. So the army which marched to its 
resonant swinging measures, the soldiers who sang this 
strange, weird anthem of universal liberty and were 
inspired by the seductive glory of its sentiments, fought 
for two years under the express and repeated declara- 
tions of their government, the press, and the people of 
the IN'orth, that they had no hostile purpose or inimical 
design against the institution of slavery. 

" Chanting hourly the praise of the prophet who 
liad foretold its downfall and made himself the first 
voluntary victim in the crusade for its overthrow, they 
persistently denied tlie leadership of the soul which 
marched ever on and on with them to the fulfillment of 
the purpose for which he had lived and died. 

" 1 am sorry to say it, Ben Nathan, but there is no 
denying the assertion that the people of the North went 



232 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

into battle under false colors. You said one thing with 
your lips and in your hearts thought another and quite 
different thing. Your words were intended to induce 
the South to trust to the sincerity of your declaration 
that you did not desire the overthrow of slavery, and 
would continue in the future even more faithfully than 
in the past, to cherish and protect the institution. But 
the chosen battle-song of your mustering legions spoke 
the real truth. The thought, the soul of John Brown, 
hidden beneath specious words and subtly grotesque 
phrasing, was the animating impulse. You fought 
shamefacedly for the liberty of the slave. For that 
liberty you were not afraid to face death upon the field 
of battle ; but you were so afraid of the taunts and 
jeers of the white people of the South — you had 
shrunk so long from the obloquy of being called a na- 
tion of negro-lovers and negro-worshipers — that it 
was not until the pains of continuous defeat had dead- 
ened your super-sensitiveness and brought you face to 
face with the certain prospect of ultimate disaster, that 
you were brave enough to avow your real motive, and 
proclaim the liberty which you had all the time secretly 
hoped to achieve. 

" On the other hand, the South mustered her hosts to 
the quaint Africo-American strains of " Dixie." With 
us, at least, there was no false pretense. We avowed 
slavery to be the corner-stone of our revolt, and hung 
its colors on our helm. With instinctiv^e scorn and in 
brave defiance of the spirit of your mystical and equiv- 
ocal ode, we caught from the slave's lips the measures 
which expressed with contemptuous defiance the dis- 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 233 

tinctiveness and perfectibility of the South, as a nation 
— a people — an organized existence. Words could 
not more forcibly express the exultant content of a 
peculiar and distinctive national! t}^ Our " Dixie " told 
the whole story. It was the emblem of our chosen 
land — a distinct nationality. Even "yet you know 
nothing of its significance and I could not elucidate to 
you its force. It meant our land — oior life — the mys- 
tic potency of a peculiar people. It was the banner- 
cry of the South — as it ^vas — as we were determined 
that it should remain. We fought exulting in the 
wrong, the scath and the peril of slavery — proud of 
all those things that in the future must cover us with 
shame ! You fought as if ashamed of the liberty you 
yearned to achieve, but dared not write upon your 
banners. 

" So the dirge of ' Old John Brow^n ' went wailing 
on to the victory which its instruments have made haste 
to disavow ; while the defiant strains of '' Dixie " rang 
out as cheerily after Appomattox as on the morning of 
the first Bull Kun. It is one of those strange melo- 
dies that not only inspires and prepares for victory, 
but consoles defeat with something of that faith which 
would not feel discouragement, with which the slave 
looked forward to the jubilee." r 

August 28, 1885. 



THE CLIMAX OF DEYOTIOK 



I WAS much impressed by the views Avhich Pascal 
Raines had expressed, and after he had left my room 
and I had heard the somewhat heavy footfall which — 
despite the best that mechanical skill can do for the 
unfortunate, will mark the steps of him who wears an 
artificial limb — as he Avent down the long corridor to 
his own room. I sat for a long time. Blower, taking- 
deep suspirations of the balmy vapor which rises from 
the incense burning in your bowl and peopling the 
azure clouds that rose before my dreaming eyes with 
battling hosts that chanted as they fought wierd songs 
whose grotesque melody was full of strange mystical 
significance. In my vision these were transformed into 
mighty forces, and one of them — as grim of feature 
as those gnomic faces which the earthquake and the 
tempest carve upon the mountain's granite outlines — 
this one strode calm and unruffled through the mighty 
tumult, cast down his grim, sardonic enemy, and held 
him lightly but secure upon the ground. And while I 
watched, the giant faded, and in his place a great obse- 
quious lackey stood, who lifted from the earth the 
captive, brushed the dust of battle off, and then stood, 
cap in hand, waiting to do his bidding. Somehow, 
Blower, this queer vision which I saw so plainh^ pic- 
tured in the smoke wreaths, pursued my fancy all night 

234 



THE VETEKAN AND HIS PIPE. 235 

long ; and in my dreams I mourned for that calm pres- 
ense, giant-like and yet benign, which strode across the 
field of strife, without one trace of passion, resolute 
yet kind, and brought an end of conflict. I seemed to 
love the uncouth, mighty presence, and to feel as if the 
spruce, obsequious lackey who had come to take his 
place was hardly an equivalent for his loss. It was but 
a dreaming fancy, however^ and no doubt a very foolish 
one. 

The morning sun dispelled these morbid fancies, 

and when our foeman-friend came to mv room 

t/ 

for an after-breakfast whiff — a common custom now 
that the bass have stopped biting for a time — I was 
almost ready to laugh over them. Such w^as not his 
mood, however. He is rarely so mirthfully inclined 
of late as was his wont. I cannot understand why 
it is. He seems to have an ineradicable fondness for 
speculating in regard to our National life and public 
affairs. Yet no one would dream of regarding him as 
a politician. He is a contemner of parties except as in- 
strumentalities for the accomplishment of great pur- 
poses, and mocks at the line-spun theories of those w4io 
would substitute prescribed systems and inflexible rules 
for public conscience and the enlightened judgment of 
the people. Unlike our best and wisest, he does not 
seem to think that the past died with yesterday. 
Somehow or other he claims that in its elements it still 
subsists. He is fond of referring to ''Time's eternal 
repetend — Yesterday, To-day, and To-morrow." This 
he counts an existence which is indivisible and yet dis- 
tinctly tripartite. To him the good and evil of To-day 



236 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

are but the fruits of Yesterday's seeding. The first 
step toward healing the woes of To-day, or securing 
the tranquiUty of To-morrow, he declares to be a full 
knowledge of Yesterday's good and evil, its strength and 
its infirmity. Because of a neglect of this knowledge 
on the part of the present — a failure to recognize this 
fundamental truth of history — he apprehends vital 
error, if not grave disaster, in the future. 

Last night I found it well nigh impossible to resist 
the influence of his foreboding. But this morning I 
pointed to the sun shining bright above the rippling 
Avaters and exclaimed reproachfully : " Behold a new 
day. Now, 

while the West bin red to see, 

And storms be none, and pirates flee 
Why sing " The Brides of Enderby ?" 

" Do I ?" he asked, as he filled his pipe and sank 
into the willow rocker that creaked complainingiy un- 
der his goodly weight. 

" Do you '?" I answered. '' Has not your merciless 
dissection of our country's patriotic melodies sufficed 
to fill the night with dolorous visions?" 

Then I told him of my dream as if he had been a 
soothsayer from whom I sought its interpretation. 

"My good Ben Nathan," he said, after a few con- 
templative puffs at the long root stem which he twisted 
carelessly in his fingers as he spoke, ^ it needs no 
Joseph to translate your dream. It was indeed but the 
inevitable conclusion of that course of thought we had 
so pleasantly pursued together before I bade you good 
night. The consciousness which you strive to slay by 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 237 

specious reasoning asserted itself in your dream. Learn 
from it that the accidents of warfare do not make or 
unmake peoples. Boundary lines do not differentiate 
populations. The line of demarkation is traced in 
divergent natures and contrasted impulses. You do 
not realize even yet what the difference between ' Old 
John Brown ' and ' Dixie ' really signified. 

" To me it is a matter of amazement that the intelli- 
gence and culture of the North should be willing to 
subordinate or even to ignore the grandest element of 
your past. Nay, I will go farther, Ben Nathan, and 
say the grandest impulse that ever inspired a nation 
to engage in conflict. Men have fought only too 
often for greed and glory. The love of conquest has 
inspired to gallant deeds whose mere recital has thrilled 
the pulses of unnumbered generations. Men have 
wrought marvels of heroism for home and country. 
Warfare has been made the instrument of faith, and 
men have sought with unquestioning zeal to secure a 
peaceful immortality for themselves, by compelling 
others to abjure the errors of unbelief. No people 
Avere ever before inspired Avith so high, so noble, so 
unselfish a purpose, however, as that which animated 
the North in its struggle with the Confederacy." 

"Yes, indeed," I murmured, in modest recognition 
of this overwhelming commendation, '^ the preservation 
of the Union, not merely for ourselves, but for you, 
also, to enjoy, was a glorious purpose." 

" Yes, Ben Nathan," Pascal Eaines responded, with 
a laugh which was not altogether complimentary in its 
tone, " that was a good purpose which you professed, 



238 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

but it was base and mean in comparison with the one 
you denied and tried to conceaL As a motive for war, 
the mere preservation of the Union — the assertion of 
the national sovereignty over certain definite hmits — 
was neither an unusual nor an especially exalted impulse 
to an aggressive warfare such as the Nation really 
waged. It did not compare in nobility and grandeur 
with the motive that inspired the Southern people. 
They fought for their homes — ' their altars and their 
fires' in very truth. I will even go farther and say 
that they fought for exactly the same principle that 
animated our forefathers in their rebellion against 
Great Britian — the collective right of a people to gov- 
ern themselves according to their own ideas. 

'^ I know it makes you wince, my friend. You have 
been accustomed to think that all the right, all the 
glory of devotion to principle, was on your side the line, 
and all that was base and selfish and unjust on the 
other. Yet I tell you plainly, Ben Nathan, that if you 
but ' stand upon your declaration,' as the lawyers say, 
the verdict of history must, and ought to be, entered 
up against you. The ethical principles which govern 
nations and peoples in the assertion and maintenance 
of sovereignty are not yet very clearly defined. In 
what we, with a quaint, almost farcical humor, call 
international law, the end always justifies the means, 
and might is almost always the sole criterion of 
right. 

" The result of our war has sanctified the claim you 
make of having fought for the preservation of national 
unity. On that ground alone, however, it is hardly 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 239 

more defensible than the German conquest of Alsace- 
Lorraine. 

" Did you ever stop to analyze the equities involved 
upon this issue ? Let us put aside the question of state- 
rights and admit that your interpretation of the Con- 
stitution was correct, and what have we ? Our fore- 
fathers, so to speak, had made a contract that they and 
their descendants should constitute a people — a l^ation, 
if you please. What moral right had they to bind a 
people for all time, or what moral right had a portion 
of that people to compel another portion to submit 
unwillingly to its continuance ? By legal analog}^ we 
might be termed tenants in common in whom the right 
of partition always resides. It was not the question of 
the right of a majority to control and subjugate an 
interspersed and factious minority, but of one section 
or people to hold by force another seeking national 
autonomy for themselves. It was not an attempt to 
overthrow or subvert an existing government. It can- 
not properly be termed sedition or rebellion. It was 
merely the spontaneous action of a whole people, occu- 
pying a definite portion of territory, to establish for 
themselves an independent government suited to their 
own wants, conditions and ideas. 

"It was no insignificant fragment, either. Of 
twelve millions of people there was scarcely a tithe of 
that race who alone were recognized as citizens — with 
whom rested the right and power of the States — who 
either felt or expressed any dissatisfaction with the action 
of the majority. Of course there were some dissentients 
and curiously enough both sides, from entirely opposite 



240 THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 

motives, have sought to magnify their numbers. You 
have done this for the sake of making it appear that 
the movement was factional and not territorial. We 
have done the same to magnify our own prowess by 
showing how hard it was to conquer even a divided 
South. One of the shrewdest things that man of mar- 
velous sagacity, Abraham Lincoln, did was to encour- 
age the formation of regiments, nominally recruited in 
the rebellious states, but really drawing the better part 
of their strength from Xorthern States whose own 
quotas were already full. I remember that we once 
captured the muster-roll of a so-called Kentucky regi- 
ment of Federal troops. It showed hardly Kentuckians 
enough among its rank and file to constitute a decent 
company. The same was true of such corps as ' Brown- 
low's Tennesseans,' a whole company of which, I have 
been told, was raised in one county of the Western 
Reserve in Ohio. 

" Despite these auplicate pretenses, however, there 
was probably never a revolutionary movement in his- 
tory that commanded such universal assent of the 
people primarily affected by it as the formation of 
the Southern Confederacy. Leaving out of consid- 
eration the colored race, the effort to sever our 
Federal relations may properly be said to have 
been unanimous. Men doubted, hesitated, and proph- 
esied disaster, but in the end not only succumbed, but 
vied with the most rabid in the maintenance of the cause 
of Southern independence. So far as the question of 
right and wrong, as involved in our pet theory of the 
right of self-government, is concerned, in this proposed 



II 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 2tl:l 

disruption of the Federal Union, the right unquestion- 
ably lay with us. If three millions of people had the 
right to proclaim independence because self-government 
is a natural right, then certainly eight millions of 
whites, separated from the people of the INorth by 
known and visible boundaries, and by still more marked 
differences of character and tradition, must have had a 
right to claim a similar political autonomy. 

" This is the way the matter presented itself to the 
Southern people. We thought we had a right to self- 
government because we were a distinct and peculiar 
people, occupying a distinct and separate territory. It 
was for this that we fought, and it was in confident 
faith that we would receive divine aid in support of 
this principle that we wrote ' Deo Vindlce ' upon our 
banner, and appealed with confidence to the arbitra- 
ment of the sword. We not only fought for what we 
believed to be a divine right, but we merely waged a 
defensive warfare against those who invaded the terri- 
tory of the states whose people had declared in favor 
of adhesion to the Confederacy. ' Dixie ' fitly symbol- 
ized our motive and purpose. We fought for a distinct 
and peculiar people, for control of a specific territory, 
for a new nationality — ' Dixie Land.' We were re- 
solved ' to live and die ' in this newly-born, unrecog- 
nized ^' Dixie," and were wilhng to live and die for her 
liberty — for the right of a great people to govern 
themselves." 

" It may be a new view of the matter to you, Ben 
Nathan. The faculty of seeing the other side is not a 
very usual one. It was thus that the question present- 
16 



M2 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ed itself to our minds, laying aside all quirks and 
technicalities, and considering only the great principle 
which underlies the American theory of self-govern- 
ment. Viewed from that standpoint, I have never yet 
seen any occasion to modify the conviction of a quar- 
ter of a century ago. If we had succeeded, tlie world 
would have indorsed this theory and applauded our 
devotion to principle. 

" You are wrong, however, in declaring the mainte- 
nance of the Union to have been the controlling mo- 
tive of your people and government. Right or wrong, 
absurd or wise, maniac or martyr, the soul of John 
Brown not only marched with your troops but inspired 
them with a spirit of marvelous self-sacrifice. Your 
soldiers fought neither for fame nor dominion. The 
lust of conquest never influenced their hearts. No 
spirit of revenge or prospect of advantage spurred 
them to the gigantic efforts required to defeat and 
crush a people so brave and a nationality so instinct 
with harmonious vitality as our confederacy. It was a 
purpose nobler tlian tlie love of liberty, grander than 
the instinct of patriotism. Shirk it as you will, deny 
it as you may, the one crowning glory of your part in 
that great struggle — the one thing that for all time 
will mark it as unprecedented in moral grandeur — is 
the fact that you fought bravely, died willingly, and 
triumphed modestly, not for your own advantage, not 
to secure your children's liberties, but to give liberty 
and equality of right and privilege to a people debased, 
untried, branded Avith the mark of servitude, and sepa- 
rated by the insuperable wall of race from your appre- 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 213 

ciative sympathy or intimate alliance. You overthrew 
the Confederacy in order that you might free the 
slave. 

" The sense of the dignity and glory of individual 
right had become so ingrained in the Northern mind 
that no peril could daunt, no difficulty discourage, and 
no hardship deter them from the accomplishment of 
this purpose. This was the great fact of that epoch, 
the real work of the Xorthern armies, and the real im- 
pulse which inspired the Northern mind. The preser- 
vation of the Union was but an incident — the means 
for the achievement of the greater end — the cover of a 
grander purpose. It was this that lifted your people 
to a pinnacle of unselfish and heroic devotion that had 
never been attained by any popular movement before. 
You fought your bi'others and kinsmen, those to 
whom the ties of race and the traditions of the past 
bound you with peculiar force, in order to lift up the 
poor, the weak and despised — the alien by race and in- 
ferior by tradition — because convinced that he had 
a right to be free ! I confess, Ben Nathan, that when I 
think of this I gladly doff my hat to the ' Yankee ' 
whom in many respects I but little esteem, cheerfully 
admitting that in this act — no matter whether it was a 
wise or foolish one — he reached a level of common 
purpose and manifested an unselfishness in his devotion 
to a glorious idea, which no other people in any age or 
clime have ever yet attained. In good or evil results 
the emancipation of four millions of slaves must ere 
long eclipse in importance the preservation of the na- 
tional territory from rupture, and the power of the 



244 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

republic from impairment. The world already knows 
it better as a struggle for liberty than as a war for ter- 
ritorial unity. Almost under the shadow of the pole, 
the Finnish peasant reads today the story of our strug- 
gle under the name and style of ' The History of the 
War for Emancipation.' That is what it means to the 
rest of the world, and what it must ultimately mean to 
us. The greater fact must ultimately swallow up the 
lesser. 

"I cannot understand why you, as a people, and 
especially those who claim to be wiser than others, 
should so persistently and shamefacedly disavow and 
ignore the very thing that sheds the brightest luster on 
your fame. For my part, I regret most sincerely that 
the giant of your dream is dead. 

" How came I to be thus appreciative of the im- 
pulse that held the North like a sleuth-hound on the 
trail of the confident and exulting South? I do not 
wonder at your inquiry, my friend. The persistency 
with which even then you denied the real purpose 
that animated your hosts and inspired your people, 
and set up instead a meaner and lower purpose, may 
well have hidden from the eyes of foemen the real 
grandeur of your devotion. I heard it better defined 
by one of my own comrades in the very heat of that 
struggle, than it ever has been by any of the golden- 
mouthed eulogists of your victory. We were in winter 
quarters on the banks of the Rapidan, when the Proc- 
lamation, which was the fulfillment of Lincoln's threat 
of three month's before, reached us. Till that moment, 
few of us believed that he would really stand up to 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE, 2tt5 

his promise. One of my messmates read it aloud. 
There was a moment of silence. Then one of them 
spoke up and said : ' It is all over with us now, boys. 
A people fighting for their own liberty is well-nigh 
invincible, but one fighting for the liberty of another^ 
and an alien race, can never he withstood ! ' 

" It was not till some months afterward, however, 
that I fully realized the truth my comrade had ex- 
pressed. You know what took me to the prison you 
have so fitly denominated a ' pen ' at Andersonville. 
Your letter had informed me that you were a prisoner 
in our hands, and I left my couch of convalescence to 
go there upon the chance of finding you. It was hardly 
a day's ride from Buckhead, and though there was 
only a chance, I did not feel justified in omitting to 
avail myself of even a possible opportunity to exem- 
plify the comradeship we had pledged to each other on 
the battlefield. On my arrival I learned that no offi- 
cers were confined there, and knew my journey was 
*in vain. I declined an invitation, not very heartily 
given, as I thought, to go within the stockade, but 
climbed up to the sentry-walk and looked over. I can 
not tell the horror of that scene. It was nearly sun- 
down of a hot autumn day. The wretchedness de- 
picted in the faces of that squalid, unprotected 
multitude was unspeakable. I could hear the soughing 
of the wind in the pines beyond, but they had neither 
breath nor shade. The stench, even where I stood, was 
sickening. Because I had been a prisoner myself, I no 
doubt pitied them the more. I guessed what they must 
endure, though I only dimly imagined the full horror 



24:6 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

of their fate. As I turned away the notes of song 

arose from that squahcl mass. I paused and listened — 

hstened to the very end of that most remarkable paean 

of self -sacri lice that ever inspired an army or a people 

to suffer and achieve for another's sake. As I rode 

away in the gloaming that follows quick upon our 

southern sunset, the words went with me, and have 

never left my memory : 

' In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, 
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me ; 
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.' 

" There is an anthem, Ben Xathan, that swallows 
up in moral grandeur all the songs of patriotic purport 
from Miriam's time till now. It marks the climax 
of human devotion. 'Perhaps for a good man 
some would even dare to die,' is the extreme limit of 
the apostle's idea of merely human self-sacrifice. But 
out of that sweltering, fetid prison-pen, into the silent 
nio-ht, came the exultant chorus of thousands who stood 
in the very presence of a lingering and terrible death. • 

' As He died to make men holy, let lis die to make men free ! ' 

" They were soldiers of your army, confronting the 
most terrible of deaths, rejoicing in their immolation 
for the sake of humanity ! They were private soldiers, 
' enlisted men,' according to the muster rolls, volun- 
teers who had stepped out of the ranks of your IN'orth- 
ern life, for what ? 

' As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free! ' 
'' The noxious air brought to my ears this answer. 
From that hour I reverenced the Yankee soldier — not 
for his superior valor, for in that we were his equal — 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 247 

not for his fortitude and devotion, for in them my 
comrades could not be excelled — but because of the 
sublimity of self-sacrifice which impelled him to do 
and suffer for others what we counted it heroism to 
dare for ourselves ! I have had more confidence in 
the final outcome of emancipation because of this 
memory. I can not see how any good is to come from 
it yet, but I can not think that the liberty bought with 
the blood of men inspired by such a motive can result 
in ultimate evil to humanity. 

" Do you wonder that I sometimes despise a people 
who will not only let such a spirit die and be forgotten, 
but even stoutly deny that it ever possessed them? 
How do I know that it is dead, and why do I say it is 
forgotten ? Look at the eulogies pronounced over the 
grave of your great leader. In prose and verse how 
many have spoken in his memory ! Yet his highest 
honor — the fact that he was the chosen instrument for 
carrying into effect the marvelous promise of a race's 
liberation — has hardly been thought worthy of men- 
tion by most of them. How do I know it is forgotten ? 
I have asked every young lady I have heard singing 
since I came among you, to favor me with ' The Battle 
Hymn of the Eepublic,' and only found one who had 
ever heard it. Yoii have not forgotten it, of course. My 
old charger even yet pricks up his ears when he hears 
a bugle note. But I tliink the staid and useful animals 
who share his paddock with him, regard the old war- 
horse as a trifle crazy at such times. You remind me 
of him, now and then, Ben Nathan," 

Septemreii 4, 1885. 



JOmED OE PAETED. 



THE pleasant outing is ended, Blower. The sum- 
mer heats are over and the summer birds have 
flown. The last bass has been landed. Tiie bright 
waters of the bay will sparkle no more for us except 
in memory. The gentle motion of the tossing boat will 
come to us only in dreams. 'No friendly voice will 
break upon our reverie when my lips clasp your amber 
mouth-piece and your fragrant breath rises drowsily 
about me after the day's labors are over. We have 
parted with the friend who was a foeman, and the 
fisher-guide who was a comrade, in the long ago. 

It was a curious parting. Why is it that we assume 
that all tender sentiment belongs to woman's king- 
dom ? Sadness and love we seem to count inseparable 
ideas. Tears are sacred to womanhood and tender- 
ness consecrate to passion or to home. The world 
would have laughed in pity or derision if it could have 
marked the sadness of those last days and the choking 
awkwardness of the final leave-taking. For a week 
Qur old friend, who had been a companion in a past of 
which we had found so much to say, as well as guide 
and helper in our daily expeditions, had exhausted all 
his simple strategy to induce us to prolong our pleasant 
holiday. To have heard him picture the delights of 
that favored region when island and main are clad in 

^48 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 249 

the many-hued garments of autumn ; when '' the soft, 
serene, September days " cover the slumberous waters 
with silver sheen ; when the frosty nights have gilded 
the hickory leaves, painted brown the oaken back- 
ground, and touched with flame the maple crests; 
Avhen balmy days and honey-dews have ripened the 
nectar-laden clusters, and the vine-leaves, whose 
silver sides the summer breezes delighted to 
toss up to the sunlight have grown dull and dark 
— to have heard him discourse of these things in his 
anxiety to defer our flitting, one would have thought 
the world had missed a poet in this harsh- voiced 
weather-beaten fisherman. "When he found these efforts 
were in vain he counted mournfully the days, and 
finally the hours, that must elapse before our departure. 
To the last moment he was assiduous in his care. The 
fishing rigs, wrapped and packed with the utmost 
nicety, will bring him to mind whenever we have need 
for them again. For the last day or two, he hardly 
left us, even to sleep. 

"I don't know why it is," he said pathetically, as 
he was putting things in order for the journey the 
evening before we were to leave, "but I've been out so 
often with ye, one a sett in' in the bow and t'other in 
the starn, a takin' off a fish sometimes for one an' then 
again for t'other, and a listenin' while ye talked, that it 
don't seem as if I'd ever want to touch an oar again 
after you're gone. Of course, I didn't always know so 
very much about what you was talkin' of, and I don't 
mind tellin' ye that I've learned a sight about many 
and many things sence I've been a rowing you around 5 



250 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

but it don't really make no difference, I s'pose, whether 
an old chap like me learns anything new or not. That 
is, it don't make no special difference to others, and 
you probably wouldn't know jest what it is to me. In 
fact, I don't know as I have exactly learned so much 
after all. The truth, is Mr. Nathan (he has always 
called me Mr. Nathan from having heard Pascal Raines 
address me so frequently as Ben Nathan), that you and 
Mr. Raines seem to be so far apart, good friends as you 
always are, that one can't never tell exactly which one 
to take sides with, till he's thought it all out himself. 
That's what I shall be doin' all through the fall fishin', 
an' after the winter sets in, when I shan't have nothin' 
else to do only jest to tend the fire and mend the rigs 
for next year's work. When I'm alone I shall always 
have you with me Mr. Nathan — you and Mr. Raines 
— coz it don't seem as if you was ever apart — one in 
the bow and the other in the starn, and I shall ar^ue 
these things all over to myself, takin' first our side, 
Mr. Nathan, and then trying to make out Mr. Raines' 
side, so's to git as nigh the right on't all as I can. 

" It's kind o' queer, but I never had no such sort of 
feelin' for any parties I ever took out before. It's jest 
seemed all the time as if I had a share in all the matters 
you was talkin' about. I used to kind of forget 
that I wan't nothing nor nobody only jest the ole fish- 
erman, Rans AVhiting. Sometimes I took your side, and 
then again I'd have to take Mr. Raines and then 
I'd think you was both jest about right, an some- 
times — not often I must allow — it 'ud seem to me 
that you was both about equally in the wrong. 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 251 

''My old woman says I been sort av dazed like, ever 
sence you come an' took me an' my boat into yer em- 
ploy ; an' she vows she believes I think more uv you 
two than uv her an' the children. But I tell her 'taint 
that. It's jest because the things you've talked about 
have kind uv lifted me up an' set me to thinkin' about 
matters that take a holt on a man that he can't shake 
off in a minit — that is, if he's worth bein' called a man. 
She says she don't mind which 'tis, but she's sorry 
you're goin' away, for she declares I hain't never been 
so pleasant 'round the house afore sence we was young 
married folks. I s'pose the truth is that it's been more 
interestin'-like to have me come home and tell over 
what you and Mr. Raines have been a 'jowerin' about, 
as he would say, than to jest have me set an' smoke 
from night-fall till bed-time. An old fellow like me 
gets kind uv talked out after thirty 3^ears, you know, 
Mr. Nathan, unless he has something to fill him up 
now and then. Besides that, our wimmen folks out 
here in the country, have a pretty dull time. They 
don't see much of the world, except a neighbor now 
and ag'in, and about all Sally hears from the outside, 
is what I chance to bring home at night, which ain't a 
great deal the generality of times. 

We live down on the Head, you know, which might 
as well be an island so far as neighbors is concerned, 
and I expect Sally does get pretty lonesome, especially 
now the chileren have gone for themselves, all except 
one, an' she might as well be, for she's off to school the 
biggest part of the year. I tell ye, Mr. I^athan, wimmen 
has a hard time anyway ; that is the common run of 



252 THE vetp:ran and his pipe. 

wimmen, that can't go to, waterin' places and the like, 
but jest have to stay at home an' see an' do the same 
things over and again, day after day. They are a deal 
worse off than men, an' I don't know as they have any- 
thing to make up for it. Leastways, I never wish I was 
one, only when I lose some of my tackle by puttin' of it 
in the wrong pocket. Then I do sometimes wish I was 
a woman so that I wouldn't have btit one pocket to 
sarch in, ye know." 

I laughed with him at his favorite jest, which we 
had heard often enough during the summer. He tied 
the last knot in the cord that bound my rod, and 
filling his pipe sat down for a last smoke with me 
before starting on his homeward row across the ]jay. 
His mind still ran on the subject of which he had 
spoken at such unusual length, and he continued be- 
tween the whiffs while he sat awkwardly enough in 
the great willow rocker, which was Pascal Kaines' 
favorite chair, holding his weather-beaten tarpaulin 
bottom upward on his knees : 

" I want ter tell ye, Mr. Nathan, that it's done me a 
world of good to know Mr. Eaines, too. Some way I 
don't feel quite so free to tell him on't as I do to speak 
to you. He ain't exactly one of our folks, you know, 
or perhaps we ain't his folks, which is the way he puts 
it.. I guess he's purty nigh right about that matter, too. 
I hate to think so jest the worst kind, for if I ain't 
nothing but a common fisherman, I can't help having 
a good deal of pride in the country, and your talk to- 
gether, while we've been out on the lake, day after day, 
has give me a good deal of consarn about it, too, I 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 253 

don't lay claim to any great learning, and, of course, 
don't count much one way nor another, but somehow or 
other I can't help thinking about such things, more es- 
pecially when I hear others that knows more and thinks 
better than I can, arguin' about them an' expound! n' of 
them. 

" Just atween us two, Mr. Nathan, I don't think I'm 
ever quitfe so good a man at home or abroad as wdien I 
quit thinkin'- about my own little 'matters all the time, 
an' tries to make up my own opinion about things that 
take in the whole country, an' them that's goin' to 
make the country when we're dead and gone. It makes 
me feel that I'm of a little more account to think that 
if I am nothing but jest Rans Whiting, the boatman, 
I've got a right an' that it's my duty, too, to detarmine 
what's right an' what's wrong — what's good an' what's 
bad — for the whole county, an' for every man in it. I 
sometimes think I know something how a king must 
feel, for if I hain't got but one say in fifty millions, 
more or less, I've got that, an' I don't know but it's 
about as important in the long run that it should be 
right as if it was the only one there was. 

" There ain't no dodging the fact that 'tain't safe 
for the country to have any of us git wrong, or at least 
not try to git right, on these things. And the more Ave 
try to get right in such things the better we are our- 
selves. There ain't no doubt of that, even if we make 
a mistake. I s'spose it's the nateral effect of forgettin' 
ourselves and rememberin' others ; or perhaps it may 
be that thinkin' about great things kind uv widens out 
even the narrest sort of mind. That's the way 'twas 



254 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

in the war, I know. There was plenty of men, jest 
hke me, that was the commonest sort of chaps at home, 
that just as soon as they felt that part of the weight of 
the country was res tin' on their shoulders, begun to 
straighten up an' loolv square to the front with their 
teeth set, not carin' the flip of a penny what became 
of them, so long as the country was safe an' slavery 
clean wiped off the sile. I never heard nobody git 
nigher the truth about that sort of thing than some 
of jest that sort of men, that nobody thought had any 
ideas beyond today's work and tonight's sleep, afore 
that time. 

'' You see, Mr. Nathan, we got the notion that the 
war was agoin' to set everything right for all time, and 
it was a mighty poor sort of a man that didn't want 
to do his part of such a job. A good many of us thought 
that was about all we could do, and we hadn't no idea 
that after it was over we'd ever be called on to do any- 
thing more. In fact, we hadn't any idea there would 
ever be anything more to do. I guess that was our 
mistake, but it was a nateral one, an' I must say I hated 
to give it up and own that 'twas a mistake. But I 
guess I'll have to. I don't like to think thai Mr. Raines 
is right, but I can't just see where he's wrong. It does 
appear as if the war hadn't exactly settled everything, 
after all. 

" I don't know-notliin' about these matters of tariff 
an' the like, an' I dont quite understand about the new- 
fangled doctrine they call civil service reform. Some- 
times it looks like a good thing, an' then again I feel 
half afraid there's more in the meal than I can exactlv 



THE VETEEAN AND HIS PIPE. 256 

make out. These things are too deep for me. I own 
up to that. I don't understand them an' never shall. 
But I b'lieve I do know what's fair an' right 'twixt man 
and man, in fact as well as in name. That's what I fit 
for^ Mr. I^athan. I don't say it to boast, but it's a fact. 
Now I can see, as Mr. Eaines says, that we've forgot 
that there's a difference between these two peoples 
about what is right and what is freedom. The South- 
erners don't look at it as we do, and don't understand 
it as we do. Come to think of it, I don't see how they 
could. So far as these things go 1 can see that we are, 
as he says, two peoples, and I can't exactly see how 
we're ever to be made one. We may hang together 
like two families in one house, but I can't see what's to 
bring us an}^ nigher one another in our opinions about 
what I can see now was the real cause of the difference." 
" You see, Mr. ISTathan, they've got the niggers right 
there with 'em — side'n side, so to speak. I'm sorry for 
it, I declare I am. I hain't got no ill will agin the 
poor things. I'm as fur from that as anybody. I want 
them to have all the rights I've got or ever expect to 
have, and be just as free to exercise 'em, too. They've 
earned it, God knows. When I think of the millions 
and millions of days' work they've done for the coun- 
try, for of course every lick they struck in the old 
slave times was for the country's advantage, and how 
peaceable and well disposed they've been when they 
might have killed and burned and made the South a 
wilderness, and no one could have blamed 'em much — 
I say when I think of these things I don't understand 
why anyone should object to their having just as good 



256 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

a show as the rest of us. Then, too, there ain't no glt- 
tin' out of it that they did help us amazingly in our 
fight with the Confederacy. Honestly, I don't see how 
we'd ever have got through with that job without their 
help. 'Twasn't so much the fighting they did, though 
that wasn't any small matter, but t'was the information 
they gave, the roads they showed, the trenches they dug, 
and the lives they saved. Of course, we can't have one 
sort of liberty for the white man and another for the 
black. I fought to put them on the same level, and 
whatever puts any difference between them puts a slur 
on them that stood by us in the war. 

" That's the way /feel, Mr. Kathan, and 1 think it's 
just as much agin the liberty we fought for, to beat 
them out of this right as it was to put them up on the 
block and sell them. It's just as much worth fighting 
about, too, for what is a man's right good for if he 
ain't at liberty to make use on't, just the same as his 
neighbors ? It ain't no liberty without that. Besides, 
it's hurting me and enslaving me, so to speak, right 
here at home. Suppose all them five or six millions 
are shut out from the polls, or scared out, or counted 
out. What is the consequence ? Then every Southern 
white man's vote is made just so much more powerful 
than mine. In that case I may do my share of the 
government just right, and my boy, that's just turned 
of twenty-one father day, he may do his part in the 
same way, and one white man down in South Carolina 
may just step up and kill both our votes. That aint fair, 
leaving the niggers all out of the question. I'm will- 
ing to give the men that were rebels just as good 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 25? 

a show as I have, not flinging their mistake up to 
them, either. But I aint wilKng to give every white 
man at ^ -le South two or three times as much power as 
I have. I may not do very much toward governing 
the coun ry, but I don't want any man prevented from 
doin- jest as much as I have a right to do ; and I don't 
want any man to have a chance to do any more. That's 
how I feeL 

"At the same time, I wish there were no niggers 
there. I know they ain't to blame for bein' black, 
but I certainly do wish they were not. I wish they 
was all white — that's what I wish. Then it wouldn't 
take but a little while to rub off the mark of bondage. 
I begin to see, as Mr. Raines showed us, that after all 
the saving of the Union wasn't the biggest share of our 
work. But I would be willing to give up my share in 
glory of that struggle if we could only get over this 
difficulty. We freed the slave, but we only half en- 
franchised the freed man. We gave liimthe ballot, but 
we failed to give him a place to put it where it would 
do him any good or have any effect on the government 
of the country. I s'pose it's natural that the southern 
man should think it not much harm, or perhaps not 
any at all, to take away the negro's right in order 
to secure his own dominion. I wouldn't mind that 
if he was likely to change his notions. One can't 
be expected to fit himself to new things all at once, 
but as far as I can see there ain't no prospect of its being 
any different. I used to think it only needed a little 
time, but twenty years don't seem to have made them 
any more willing to admit the colored man's right than 
17 



258 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

they were at first. I don't see what we are goin' to do 
about it, and yet I know that if something isn't done, 
there's bound to be a deal of trouble over it sooner or 
later. AYhat do you suppose will come out of it all, 
Mr. Nathan." 

" I'll tell you what will come of it, Ransom," said 
Pascal Eaines, who had come sauntering along the 
hall and into my room, the door of which was open, in 
time to hear the closing remarks of our old friend. 
Perhaps he had heard more, for Ran's tones were not 
such as w^alls or distance could smother. " I will tell 
you what will come of it," he repeated, as he came and 
laid his hand upon the shoulder of the old man, " either 
the Republic must find a remedy for this debasement 
of the freeman's right or the Republic must die in order 
that the freeman may achieve his right." 

" Oh, I hope not — I hope not so bad as that, Mr, 
Raines," said the old man as he rose, and taking his 
red bandanna from the crown of his tarpaulin, wiped 
the sweat-drops from his troubled face. " You don't 
think that ?" he asked appealingly. 

"It was such men as you, Mr. Whiting," answered 
Raines, " who taught the world that the right, even of 
the slave, was of more importance than a Nation's 
peace. Why should not the freeman's prerogative be 
of more importance than a nation's existence ?" 

"I — don't — know," answered the old man, while 
the troubled look grew deeper on his scarred ctnd 
rugged face. 

Then he took his leave, his lip quivering and his 
voice softening as he bade us good-bye. We watched 



I 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 259 

him from the window as he rowed across the moon-ht 
bay toward his home upon the Head. When the flash 
of his oars could no longer be seen, Pascal Eaines 
turned away and said in a more cheerful tone than it 
had been his wont to use of late : 

" You and I may speculate, Ben Nathan, with very 
little result, but when such men as he begin to think, 
there is hope that something will be done. It is the 
peculiarity of our system, perhaps I might almost say 
the distinctive feature of our civilization, that the in- 
stinct of the masses is truer than the wisdom of the states- 
man. It is only when the people cease to recognize the 
fact that the responsibility for good government rests 
with them, that danger threatens the Republic. I do 
not see how the great problem is to be solved, but it is 
perhaps well that the freedman's right is so closely 
linked with the liberator's privilege. The Northern 
patriot could no doubt summon fortitude to endure the 
sight of the colored man's misfortunes for a long time, 
were it not that his own individual right to rule is 
thereby perceptibly abated and depreciated. You 
know it was really the fear of slavery's aggressions that 
stirred up this wonderful Northern conscience of yours 
to effect its eradication. When once aroused it was a 
flame of fire — I grant you that — but who can tell 
how long the slave might have languished in bondage 
without interference or even plausible hope, had not the 
fear taken possession of men's minds that some time or 
other the rights of ^Northern freemen might be en- 
dangered by its existence. 

" Free Kansas " was called a crusade a2:ainst slav- 



260 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

ery. It was more properly a movement to protect 
free labor. If we had been content to remain as we 
were, and had not tried to compel the ISTorth to uphold 
and protect the institution, I am of the notion, Ben 
I^athan, that the zeal of your Northern abolitionists 
would have ended in a war of angry words alone. So, 
too, if the South, to-day, would voluntarily relinquish 
the power which it wields by virtue of the suppressed 
neffro vote, there is no doubt but the North would will- 
ingly consent to their disfranchisement, and the prob- 
lem of the negro's future would be left in our hands. 
I cannot help thinking that, all things considered, this 
would be the better course for all, but I know it will not 
be adopted. We will not give up the power that has been 
given into our hands by a curious accident, and some 
time or other you will grow restive under the undue ad- 
vantage thus given to the South. What the outcome 
will be no man can tell. It is quite within the range 
of possibility that the Union, which was restored in 
order that the colored man might receive his liberty, 
should be again imperilled in order that he may obtain 
its full fruition." 
September 11, 1885. 



AUTUMlSr REVEEIES. 



We are back at the old homestead on the hillside, 
Blower. Here our summer wanderings began, and here 
they must end. We came Avhen flower and leaf and 
twittering songster told the story of new life or sang the 
ever welcome song of love. The woefulness of the past 
faded out of our memory beneath tliese sunny influences 
and the freshness of youth's heyday came to us once 
more. It is the dreams of youth after all, Blower, 
that give manhood strength to battle with adversity. 
They are the true elixir of life, by Avhich the over- 
wearied soul is made strong for new duties. Some one 
has said that " genius is that power which carries the 
attributes of ^^outh into the domain of age." Yet we 
are wont to sneer at youth's credulity and inexperience 
— to laugh at the simple pleasures that delight, and 
mock at the half-imagined woes that veil with shadows 
life's young day. Our riper wisdom jeers at sentiment, 
and boasts of its fancied power to see things as tliey 
really are. Yet it is sentiment that rules the world 
and impels men to worthy achievement. It may be 
the instrument of evil, but whether its results are good 
or bad it is a weapon of celestial temper. It does the 
world's work in spite of selfishness and greed. 

Now and then a Yirginius rouses a nation to over- 
throw a tyrant by the story of his own wrongs, but it 

361 



262 THE VPJTERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

is rarely the man who is oppressed that inspires revolt 
and heads resistance. Soine Moses from the desert of 
Horeb comes to the Egypt, where men suffer wrong, 
inspired with holy zeal for their deliverance ; some 
John Browm dies to show the slave how freemen value 
liberty. It is the sentiment of justice and humanity, 
stirred to life by the story of another's w^rongs, that 
wakens always the highest manhood and accomplishes 
the most glorious results. Sometimes we call it chiv- 
alry ; sometimes we name it patriotism ; but when there 
seems to be no special need for self-sacrifice and devo- 
tion we laugh at the power that redeemed, and call it 
— folly! 

Even in our land, wdiere the climacteric miracle of 
the ages has so recently been wrought, it has been cus- 
tomary of late to sneer at sentiment in politics and 
statesmanship. Our wise men tell us that the politi- 
cians' art is purely monetary ; that he alone is worthy 
to be termed a statesman who devotes himself to ques- 
tions of demand and supply — to whose mind human 
right is bounded by public credit. The Midas touch is 
preferred to the patriot's . pride, and dollars and cents 
eclipse all questions of right and wrong. Economy, 
we are told, is better than glory, and national shame is 
accounted easy to endure when w^ounded pride is poul- 
ticed with perceptible profit. It was a hard thing for 
England to lose that chivalric soldier who perished in 
Khartoum, abandoned and betrayed by those whom he 
served. Sentiment would have dictated his relief at 
any cost and under all circumstances. But a wise and 
prudent statesmaaship decreed it to be better that he 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 263 

should perish and the honor of Britain be forever tar- 
nished by his betrayal, than that the tax on beer should 
be increased ! 

Nevertheless, sentiment is not dead, and the base 
and sordid leprosy that boasts the name of practicality, 
however deep it may have eaten into our life, has not 
yet destroyed its core. There is still something more 
potent than greed — more important than econom}^ 
As Ransom Whiting said, " it is a good thing for a man 
to think of something beyond his own little matters of 
daily need." Thrift is well enough in its way, but the 
patriot heart should direct the tradesman's skill. Polit- 
ical economy is but an incident of national life — the 
means by which great national ends are to be achieved. 
Sentiment perceives these ends, and is inspired to labor 
and endure for their achievement. The folly that calls 
itself practicality never looks beyond the means. Sen- 
timent inspired the soldiers who fought for the libera- 
tion of the slave. The practical statesmen of that day 
have not yet ceased to mourn because the country could 
not be preserved without emancipation. The sentiment- 
tal view of the situation was that it was better the na- 
tion should be blotted out, than that slavery should be 
perpetuated ! The practical view of the matter was, 
that the nation should seek only to reconquer its terri- 
tory, restore its sovereignty, and collect its revenues ! 
Xow that we look back upon it we can see that Pascal 
Raines was right in declaring that liberty was the 
great object for which the Federal soldier fought — the 
liberty of another — and that the preservation of the 
national domain and the national unity was but an in- 



26tl: THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

cident — a means b}^ which the hberty for which we 
fought may be perfected and perpetuated. 

One phase of the great work which our nationahty was 
designed to accomphsh is at an end. One cycle of human 
right is complete. Has the end of effort and of aspira- 
tion come ? Has the task assigned to us by that divine 
allotment which we call destiny, been fully performed ? 
Ah, me, old friend, I fear it is but half begun. 

When we came here in the early summer, Blower, 
it was to loiter under the blossommg trees and dream 
of a dead past and a dead love. Every footstep stirred 
the mold of tender memories. Every breath was redo- 
lent with the fragrance of by -gone days. It was a past 
that wooed me backward, Blower. Its pleasures hid 
the duties of the present, and made the morrow seem 
only a dreary waste of hopeless woe. Thei^e was a 
strange fascination in recalling those long-past hours 
of bliss, under the fragrant canopy, with the sunlight 
struggling through its meshes — with birds and bees 
above and about me, and the soft, springing turf be- 
neath. Even the evidences of decay that were around 
consoled my loneliness. There was a bitter sweetness 
in the fact that the soft grassy mound in the little 
church-yard beyond the skirt of soughing pines, with 
only "Alice" on the snowy marble, was mine — the 
tomb in which love and hope and aspiration all lay 
buried. Since it was rounded up, the world had been 
to me only an empty shell, holding no honor that I de- 
sired, no duty that I regarded as incumbent upon me 
to perform. 



THE VETERAN AND KIS PIPE. 265 

I mourned for remembered joys as if I had been 
wronged by their departure. The magnitude of m}^ 
loss induced a sort of self-pity which fitted the balmy 
season, and suited well my weary mood. Perhaps I 
have been too much a dreamer, for while no one could fill 
the void left in my heart, it seems now as if I had 
wronged the gentle dead by growing no better and 
worthier — by gathering no harvest of good and noble 
deeds with which to greet her expectant spirit when 
we meet on the hither shore of the great unknown, 
where she is waiting for me. 

It is all changed now, Blower. The trees are bent 
low with a great burden of ripening fruit. Even the 
half decayed trunk I likened to myself has its few re- 
maining branches bowed so that their tips touch the 
earth, with dull green apples, dashed with red upon the 
sunny side, that give promise of rich flavor when the 
snow lies deep about the withered stock. The clover 
heads are dry and dun, though the aftermath is spring- 
ing fresh and green. The hedgerow by the old wall is 
aglow with golden-rod, and dogwood and sumach make 
its crest a line of flame. Here and there, upon the dis- 
tant hills, a soft-maple begins to show its gorgeous 
autum tints, while now and then an early ripening 
hickory seems to cleave the emerald mass from turf to 
the horizon with a shaft of golden light. The bees are 
droning lazily about the ripening fruit, and Arachnis 
watches lazily the nets she has set during the summer, 
half heedless of the prey which they ensnare. Every- 
thing bespeaks ripeness and fruitage. The harvest 
waits only to be gathered. The results of toil and care 



26(y THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

and patient waiting are ready for the year's ingather- 
ing. Is the husbandman heedless of his opportunity ? 
Will he leave the harvest to be wasted by frost and 
storm ? His voice comes to us on the brisk autumn 
breeze in answer, as he cheers the patient beasts who 
draw the loaded wagons toward the open doors of the 
great barn upon the hillside. He would be a foolish 
man indeed who would turn away and leave the out- 
come of his care and toil to molder back to dust 
ungathered and unused. It is only nations that thus 
squander the fruits of mighty labors and spurn the 
harvest watered with the blood of heroes ! 

My memories are not of tender dalliance in the 
orchard now, old friend. The little grave in the quiet 
churchyard, covered with evergreen periwinkle, through 
the clustering leaves of which the calm blue eyes — a 
second flowering which the favored autumn sometimes 
brings — look trustfully up into the clear blue sky, 
draws me irresistibly to its side. I lean upon the white 
headstone; I recline upon the verdant mound and 
dream of her who lies beneath, not as one lost, but as 
one found — a living, ever-loving presence. The story 
which so long has been too sad for memory to dwell 
upon, comes back to me now without one thought of 
pain. A thousand times sweeter than that memory of 
young love's first sweet whispered words breathed in 
my ear, beneath the blossoming orchard's fragrant 
canopy, is now the recollection of that winter deathbed 
scene. 

It is a simple story. Blower, meaningless no doubt 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 267 

to stranger hearts. For more than a score of years it 
has been to me a woeful memory — a sad, inexphcable 
mystery. By some strange alchemy the autumn scenes 
have transformed it all at once into a blissful vision. 
The years have dragged slowly and wearily since that 
time. I have not been a sluggard, Blower ; that you 
can testify. But I have yearned always for the end. 
I have longed to go to my beloved, to lie down beside 
her in the pleasant country church-yard, and wake to 
new life with her in the sweet fields of Elysium. And 
always I have dreamed of those blissful days in the 
fragrant orchard bower, with the soft spring turf be- 
neath us and the half translucent billows of white and 
green above, as the archetype of the hereafter. I have 
])ictured it as an endless oJGfering of rapturous tender- 
ness which awaited my coming, never once thinking 
what return I might make for the love which all this 
time has been ripening in the sunshine of the better 
land. The harvest scenes and ripe autumnal beauty 
have taught me better. I see now^ that life's sunset 
brought a truer knowledge of life's duties and responsi- 
bilities to her eyes, dimmed though they ^\^ere by the 
fast coming night. 

I can never forget it, Blower, though until this 
moment I have been unable to speak of it even to you. 
She was my comrade's only sister — Joe's other self. 
We had not seen each other since I brought the story 
of her loss with the news of our victor}^ The disabled 
but victorious veteran won a more glorious victory 
while he waited for his wounds to heal, than he had 
ever shared upon the field of battle, There were a few 



268 THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 

short months of paradise. Then came the shock of 
battle again and with it wounds, disease, and the long, 
silent night of captivity. My lot was hard. I did not 
bear it mimurmuringly, but what would it have been 
if I had known her suffering? In all those weary 
months it did not once occur to me that she would think 
me dead. My comrades knew of my wound and I did 
not doubt that she had heard of my capture. I wrote 
but once — I had no other opportunity — but was not 
that enough ? 

"Ah me ! she had been in the grave a year when 
that poor missive came to her address. What had 
been its wanderings or where it went astray no man 
knoweth. After our lines fell back a fire had broken 
out in the forest where we fought and she was told 
that I had perished in the flames. The sickening story 
was told to her with terrible particularity by one who 
only sought to offer consolation. It was enough. 
The strain of this great horror was too much for the 
slender thread of her sweet life. 

The snow was heaped against the clattering panes 
when my captivity ended. I stood again, the shadow 
of my former self, within the walls of the old home- 
stead, by the bedside of my dying love. The winter 
sun was sinking in the west, where the soft clouds 
shone warm and bright as with the radiance of an im- 
mortal day. She knew me — smiled — pressed my 
hand weakly and whispered : 

" Now I can die, since I know you live — to do a 
man's work — ^.in the world and — for the world!" 

It seemed cruel that she should thus abjure me to 



THE VETERAN AND HIS PIPE. 269 

live when I so longed to die with her. Why should I 
work in the world or for the world ? What had the 
world for me to do or win after she had left its con- 
fines? 

I see it all now^, Blower. She would have me gather 
a harvest of good works — manly deeds worthy of the 
hero of her dreams — that I may bring the record 
of a life inspired by an undying love, when I came to 
mate with her in the peaceful clime forever. Have I 
obeyed her injunction, Blower? I have lived and 
wrought. My hair has grown silvery with time and 
woe. I have lived in the past and mourned unceasingly 
for the love it mockingly offered to my lips. While 
time has swept by without a moment's pause, has the 
harvest wasted or merely ripened ? Is there yet time 
to gather the sheaves of Yesterday into the garner for 
To-morrow's sustenance and delectation ? 

I ask the question reverently. Blower, wondering 
whether any great work for humanity lies at the thres- 
hold of To-day. 

September 18, 1885. 



THE END. 



^-, 



^^lr^? 



i/?^ 



